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IMMORTELLES 



— OF- 



LOVE 



By J. O. BARRETT. 9'?r5~^ 



" What cannot be trusted is not worth having. * * * We cannot love 
apart, nor live except in each other's love." — Soul Seer. 



BOSTON, MASS. : ^ 
COLBY AND RICH, 

No. 9. Montgomery Place. 
1874. 



-^6\ 



cA^ 



^t:^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in 11^^ year 1873, by 

J. O. BAERETT, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



iUebicatulJ to 

WHO HAS TAUGHT ME THE LAW OF LOVE. 



Dear Reader: 

Herein you find radical sentiment in beautiful dress — axio- 
maiic thought, with argument implied. It is the product of 
calm inspiration, and offered without a misgiving, for I ask not 
praise or blame, but simply to awaken candid inquiry into the 
natural laws of our being. 

The incidents herein related are actual experiences, and belong 
therefore to our great human wealth. A multum in parvOy hav- 
ing a sunny philosophy, comprising our social life aa it is and 
as it should be, the sweet and hopeful prophecy buds in my soul, 
that it will be a little moral giant in reform. 

It is for all — men, women and children. It breathes in its 
moral intelligence the hope that those who have suffered, and 
find hero a balm for their wounds, may be encouraged, and 
remember — 



"There is rain in the sweet heavens 

To wash us white as snow;" 

a,nd that those who are inexperienced and welcome life as a 
mellenial dawn — as young folks in their innocence oft 
imagine — may discover here lessons of warning and of aspi- 
ration, and early learn that nobility of character accrues 
from a just and righteous life. 

The present actors in the drama of human history are 
entering a social revolution, pregnant with higher civiliza- 
tions, paving the way as with a "bleeding sacrifice" that 
shall try all our souls. 

That my souvenir of .loving faith in these principles may 
add speed to the agitation and blossom the very crown of thorns 
that the faithful shall wear, is the sincere and devout heart- 
wish of the author. 

J. O. B. 
"Mount Olive," Glen Betjlah, Wis., 
Summer, 1873. 



IMMORTELLES OF LOYE. 



~^/rOENINGS of Heaven have dawned on the world ! 
■^-^ Justice is principle in action; her heart-beat is 
sounding down the centuries. 

Freedom the most possible to the individual; mo- 
nopoly the least possible. 

Equal rights the limit of freedom; and this the 
duty of government. 

The activity of all the forces of human being to 
secure the highest and best in life. 

Mar not the casket of the immortal spirit by starva- 
tion; but summer-bloom all natural affections and 
aspirations. 

Carry the balm of love to the thirsty, and purify 
the Social Heart, clear as a crystal with a drop of 
water in it. 



TT thunders! it lightens down the rain-chains! 
-*- The great deep is opened up ! 
The battle of souls is on us ! 

a) 



IMMORTELLES OF LO\TE. 

The State is sold for messes of pottage! 
Legislation presumes to undo God — 
Manufacturing human rights ! 
It worships mammon! has no conscience! 

The church is rotten clear to the heart! 
Gloom is in the pulpits and pews! 
The holy water on the altars is frozen! 
The incense is the breath of fashion! 
It hath no spirit of prophecy! 
No seership! no gift of tongues! 
'No healing balm ! For a pretence 
It would deaden God in a Constitution! 
But Divine wrath stabs it 
From roof to corner-stone! 

Get out from under the church's rafters, 

And rest under the stars! 

Oh, this courtship of God's groves 

With mossy rocks for shrines ! 

Oh, this freedom of the soul 

Under the dome of nature's temple! 

Oh, this heart-beat of the Infinite, 

Trembling in my soul! 

Oh, this faith in love and goodness, 

Though planets run lawless thro' the sky! 

Breakers ahead! volcanic valves! 

The electric blood of revolutions ! 

Social divorces to alarm the soul-sleepers! 

Passion's Iconoclast, 

And the rustle of an angel's wing! 



EEVOLrTION. 9 

The sweat pours from the great brows ! 
The crown of thorns is blossoming! 
Whole nations are rotting down! 
Plough them under a thousand feet! 
Give the farmers of Heaven a chance! 

O tillers of the soil ! 

O miners of the valleys and mountains! 

O sailors on the seas ! 

O mechanics, inventors, teachers, artists! 

O clam-diggers, boot-blackers, hod-carriers! 

O railroad builders, river drivers, lumber sawyers! 

O house carpenters and chimney sweepers! 

O street scavengers and rag pickers! 

■^ * "^ Know ye not 

That God has come down to see 

"Where your bloody sweat stains red 

The lintels of the capitols ? 

O prisoners, petting squirrels and birds in your cells! 

O insane, wild for the wine of inspiration! 

O inebriates, mad for the iire-springs that damn the 

gods! 
O orphan minstrels of the city's streets, 
Sleeping on the door-steps of the mansions! 
O blasted souls, adrift on life's dead sea! 
O sorrowful women whom the lords of lust have 

ruined ! 
O bruised and broken-hearted in a million -homes! 
'^ ^ ^ Lo ! the dissolving views 
Are out- waves from angels' breathing, 



10 IMMOKrELLES OF L(WE. 

In hot haste to redeem us ! 
See that banner woven in the factories 
Of the spirit country, covered o'er 
With emblazonry of hope to mortals! 
How the words fire-flash and burn! 
Eead them, O prisoners of earth-lands- 
Kead the order of the Kew Kepnblie! 



T IFE inalienable! 
^ Self-governments ! 

International unions ! 

Courts of equity without statutes! 

Eeform, not punishment! 

Peace congresses of nations! 

Free trade! 

Labor and fraternity! 

Sexual equality! 

Eegeneration by holy generation! 



IVTAN is soul of woman's soul, 
■^■^ And love is its completeness; 
And never will it lose control, 

If it is full of sweetness. 
Home is rest with happy care. 

And many^re its pleasures. 
If all the children living there 

Are ever welcomed treasures. 
Life is all one honey moon, 

"When free from empty fashion, 
If husbands keep their wives in tune 

By chastity of passion. 



ECLIPSES BUDS. 11 

pCLIPSES of soul!— Oh, what revelations! 

•^ What enfolding within itself and trembling rest! 

What great thought thence cometh with hope, 

And deejD communion with the Infinite^ 

As night for stars, so outer gloom for inner glory. 

Saddest hours are soul-recuperations, — 

The time to see the faces of the gone before! 

Doth darkness hinder the morning of day? 

Doth the storm prevent the return of sunshine? 

O darkness and the storm, fold me in your arms! 

Ye reveal me to myself where my love is! 

O eclipse of Faith, hiding the sun-face of Truth! 

O world of doubt, crossing the path of progression! 

O shadow-isle of uncertainty. 

Yelling in the vision of immortality! 

O night of error, when we sleep for*the morning! 

O angel of death! O life in the darkness of rest! 

O horoscope of the Divine Government! 

O key of spiritual mysteries. 

Turning in the locks of science! 



"DUDS that were frozen all winter in snow, 
-*-^ Have risen again from the dead, 
And early this June they are all in the blow 
Of a delicate blue, white and red. 

Alas! comes a frost with a cold chilling breath, 
That touches them close to the ground, 

And over half of them, just gone to their death. 
Are lying all scattered around. 



12 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

And buds on the trees, swinging np in the air, 
In winds of a clond-cnrtained morn. 

Are dropping off fast, till they're almost bare, 
And only a remnant is born. 

Most precious of buds are the angelic norms, 

Our human affection would hold, 
That fell untimely by the internal storms 

That blight with the crudest mold. 

Oh, where have they gone in so brief a time? 

Did angels attract them above. 
To grow on the tree of life, safe in the clime 

Of frostless, sweet Edens of Love? 

Shall w^e be forgiven the foeticide act 
By which they^were wilted and chilled. 

And sorrow, up there, o'er the painfulest fact, 
That buds in the budding were killed? 

Shall we know tliem there, in that heavenly land, 

With joy or repentance of heart. 
When thinking that ever a humanly hand, 

Could thrust with a murderous dart? 

Will angels report ev'ry mischievous thing, 
• Once done in our ignorant years? 
Will mem'ry thereof give an edge to the sting 
That opened the fountain of tears? 

O motherly Love! canst thou heal all the wounds 

That famish life's tree to the root, 
Until the new law in our marriage abounds. 

That buds shall enllow'r to the fruit? 



PEOPLE. 13 

pEOPLE — I love them; they me; 
-*- But cannot aflbrd too closely. 
This hugging one to death 
By the anaconda of Flattery — 
Too much by half ! 
A shining distance, sir, 
Makes one patriotic. 

I cannot entertain all the beggars ! 

They will suck me up. 

As sponge the water! 

I brunt the world by force; 

Put on the don't-care 

To gain a place: 

Then touch me voraciously 

If 3^ou dare! 

In my soul is another soul 

To make a large soul ; 

And I swear by the Eternal, 

Ye shall not destroy that. 

Stand off ! I will bless some of you, 

And dot the deserts in you with green isles. 

You say you touched me? Why, I did not even 
feel your elbows- in such a crowd. 

So intent in my business, my nerves are taut, like 
cables in the wire bridge, indifferent alike to patrician 
or plebian, saint or sinner. 

Tlie feeling is down in my pocket, sir, when I am 
traveling. 

That crowd in my way? I shall pass it, if I have 



14 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

to walk on men's shoulders. You may be in the 
front, and you, and you; and so we all will make 
progress, when each tries to get ahead. 



Miss you ? 
Ask the shadowed light 
Of the pensive night, 
If it misses its stars, 
"When a vail is ON^er their silver bars. 

Miss you ? 
Ask the mystic dulse 
Of the constant pulse. 
If it misses a heart. 
When a distance divides its counterpart. 

Miss you ? 
Ask the tears of eyes. 
Or the soul of sighs. 
If a something is missed, 
When in dreams the sweetest of lips are kissed. 

Miss you ? 
Ask the loving breast 
Of its faith and rest, 
If it misses a calm. 
When it thirsts so strong for its healing balm. 



MUKDERENG WARS. 1 5 

"M"UKDEKIFG is the business of the people! 

-^ Beasts, birds, fish, all are mardered! 

The pelted ox is in the car; he is crazy at the mad 

rush ; 
How wild and big his eyes ! 
He snuffs murder ahead! 
A man knocks him down, and stabs him! 
Dead so quick? 

His carcass is decently cut into slices, 
And eaten by civilized cannibals! 

Is there no other way to live? 

Angels! are there any slaughter houses in your 

country? 
O chemists, psychologists, ethnologists! 
Try your skill at extracting vital pabulum from all 

things, 
Without destruction of life. 
Save us the universal crime of murdering 
And devouring the innocent! 



TTTAKS! wars! whence come they? How long is 
their reigning? 

Ask your national law that demands human butchery 

To keep up a majesty over its enemies! 

Ask the priests of the pulpits who are teaching atone- 
ments 

To appease the wrath of an implacable Deity! 

Ask the schools that are curdling the blood of the 
pupils 



16 IMMORTELI^S OF LOVE. 

With accounts of battles tliat disgrace all our 

histories! 
Ask the Sunday schools that instruct little Christians 
To reverence Avhat's written in the old Hebrew 

Scriptures, 
Of the plagues and the battles that Jehovah once 

ordered ! 
Ask the mothers who warred against husbands' 

oppressions, 
When children were forced into life without welcome! 
Ask the milk of the mothers that is poisoned bj 

passion, 
So building the battle in the blood of the infants! 
Ask the fashions that raid upon honor and virtue, 
And the cannibal diet on which we are living! 
Ask the drink of the still, full of misery's anger, 
How the brains grow mad for the onslaught of 

murder! 
O Grod,what a farce! what a damnable error! — 
This worship of blood in the hells of Saint Custom! 
What a tax! what a sorrow! what a hellish maneuver! 
What a horrible sight — this supporting vast armies 
To maim, to destroy, and make orphans and widows! 
What a culpable mischief this bounding of nations 
With guns to provoke them and murder invaders! 

It is cowards that war, and fear prompts them to 

fighting. 
And to haste of the battle for a life-preservation! 
We act in our anger what we conspired in secret. 
,But genius is never a bearer of armor; 



WAES. 17 

No magnet is liere to attract its provoMng; 

The Eepublic of Man is a manhood self-governed I 

Oh, the glory! Oh, the glory! 
That shall come to onr dear mother world, 
When the lightning of truth brightening 

With the ages as they roll, 
Pulsing, pulsing 

Tides of love from soul to soul, 
Shall dissever all oT')pressions, 
And destroy all false concessions 

To a party, sect or clan; 
Shall abolish all relations 
Of the boundaries of nations 

That enslave our brother man ! 

Oh, the glory! Oh, the glory! 
That shall come to our dear mother world, 
When the spirit we inherit. 

Striking valiant 'gainst the wrong, 

Shouting, shouting 
Equal rights to all belong! 
Shall emancipate the races. 
And shall consecrate all places 

Holy in a common cause, 
Till there is a heart communion 
Of humanity in union, 

Ruled at last by higher laws! 
2 



18 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

T IBEETT! God's generosity; man's chief abuse 
-^ of himself — as if stealing and murdering would 
gain it! 

Is it mine — ^all riches, all dominions? See here, 
how by self, liberty turns to oppression! 

Sovereign, do you say? l^ay, a function in the 
social body; related and therefore responsible. 

Free is air, water, soil, wealth of mines and forests; 
and the best legislation is every one's privilege of use, 
as possession without monopoly. 

Beware of Theocracy that presumes to define by 
stern rule the way we all must walk in! 

Tastes and attractions are diverse as organizations; 
and the beauty of living is freedom to live out our 
highest aspiration with the same respect for others' 
rights. 

Some are polygamous by birth, — ^the ante-natal 
psychologies of races and associations made them so; 
some, monogamic; some, celibates. 

It is the greatest victory of self-hood to allow what 
suits the ruling genius of each and all; and the best 
law of the land is to prevent the raid of the oppres- 
sor and the free luster. 

Take, then, the responsibility of your own deeds, 
and, remember, that society too, has claims here for 
the security of its virtue through your nobility, that 
the liberty the angels have may be ours at last in the 
subordinate administration of the passional to the 
spiritual; which is the glory of self-government. 



COURTS OF lAW. 19 

/COURTS of law — ^what of their justice? I was iu 
^ the spirit in the business hours: 

I saw a man in the prisoner's box, tried for stealing 
corn, when hungry. 

The scowl on the forehead of the judge sealed the 
severity of his honor; and the jurors cast the same 
in their teeth, as the lawyers applied the penalty of 
the law in the decency of gentlemen! 

Even Ms lawyer knew he had stolen the corn, but 
sought to clear him, not for mercy's sake, but to prove 
his own smartness. 

The poor man was condemned and thrust into 
prison to satisfy the majesty of law; and the muling 
church said: Better that his family starve than one 
jot or tittle of the statute be unfulfilled! 

And I saw the magnetic threads outward going 
from the souls of these honorables, and lo, they were 
forged into knots of chains, bound upon defenseless 
men and women. And I heard voices ask: Who 
have robbed health and beauty from the wives of the 
administrators of law and order? Who have stolen 
strength from the nerves, thought from the brains, 
love from the affections ? 

And an accusing spirit answered : The courts are 
mockeries! The greater sin of soul-stealing goes un- 
punished in human codes! But justice doth not tany 
for our night, and her legislation is — The freedom of 
the soul to possess a righteous citizenship. 



20 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

"P TILES do not apply to all cases: Sometimes the 
-^^ golden, sometimes the iron, as the wisdom of cir- 
cumstances requires. 

Lo! these are the commandments of the Spirit: 

Thou shalt love thy neighbor better than thyself. 

Thou shalt give to him only when his necessity 
demands it. 

Thou shalt deny him when he would abuse thy 
charity. 

Thou shalt enlighten him till he shall no longer 
ask of thee. 

Thou shalt economize all the forces of thy being. 

Thou shalt subordinate all thy possessions to the 
uses of human happiness. 

Thou shalt neither receive nor give what will injure 
the affections of the soul. 

Thou shalt preserve in purity all the functions of 
thy body. 

Thou shalt not murder a soul by slander or lying. 

Thou shalt deny thyself for the good of life, and 
develop thyself in perfectibility of character. 

EELIGIOK — has it specialties? One Christ only; 
one Sabbath day? 
My child is my Savior, saving me by example of 
innocence. 

And God is so divine everywhere! all days are sacred! 
And all places the Palestine of angel visitants ! 
Come, heathen philosophers, into the free temple of 
religion ! 

What think ye of our new Mary and Jesus? 



FArrH. 21 

T^AITII — a force, a function, a magnetism, the pulse 
-*- of the soul and the will of the spirit. 

Sun-faith, arrowing beams through space, kissing 
all the planets at once; night-faith in the stars; floral- 
faith in the summer rains; child-faith in mother to 
soothe all aches. 

Faith! O Spring of Immortality! O Angel of 
Freshness! Come to me! 

1 am a boj again on the green banks of a river. 

Mystic hands upon the church's walls, spirit voices, 
spirit bodies materialized, raps on the tables and 
hearts, photographs of immortals, nations in revolt 
against their governments ! 

And I am an equal miracle, and can mold matter 
easy as the beetle rolling up its miniature mountain 
to lay its eggs in. 

ISTinety and nine thousand years hence, I shall have 
completed my study of chemistry ; then a few of us 
intend to make a world of our own, somewhere. 

Faith that works by knowledge laid the solar- walks ; 
and why not add another planet to produce human 
beings after our kind ? 

My hand now on the Bible of IN^ature, I swear by 
the gods of the ineffable, that I will rule the earth 
with its millions of instinctive creatures in me. 

I will be master of self, of appetite, of passion, of 
doubt, of envy, of fear, of emulation, of the elements, 
of circumstances. 

I glory in the strong sea- wave that rolls and rolls, 



22 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

mad for the wind, lashing the rocks, driving the fleet 
of ships into port. 

Eide me so, O Fate, but I shall be the General in 
this battle. 

Blow, tempests ! burn, fire ! freeze, ice ! kill, O devil 
of suicide! I am immortal overall your deaths, and. 
will put you all in prison for service! 



rpiIOUGIITS are ourselves in emigration from the 

-*- isle of self: 

Mind-waves from the life-boat's ploughing on the still 

deep. 
Do not filthy dreamings report affection's lure; 
And miserly thinking, oppressive rule? 
From tlie corridors of heaven they echo — 
Hail pattering on the home-roof ! 
Accusing spirits whisper them in their councils, 
And station sentinels on the high towers of faith 
To ward oiF their embodied demoniacs. 

I study my relations to habit, as the philosopher the 

sun — 
By the vaporous colors in the analysis of the solar 

spectrum. 
My thoughts weigh me; write my biography. 
Let us build a stairway with thoughts for rounds 
Up the pillars of Truth. 



SLANDER — CRrnc. 23 

GLANDEE hurting yon? Then yon may deserve 
^ it! If giving not its occasion, why disturbed? 
Is it yonr venom that needs vent? 

Sit nnder the gnarled oaks in the cold, and see how 
they stand up against the wind. Thence cometh their 
fine solidity. 

There is philosophy even in slander: It takes its 
liydra-head in, like a turtle when you touch it, and 
will snap at you if you plague the monster. 

Let it alone and it will let you alone: E"obody will 
meddle with you when you are known as independent 
of abuse: Why hinder your journey by stopping to 
whip so feeble an enemy? 

You are not fit for liberty if you do not pay its 
price: Out of tribulation cometh heaven: High 
commissions, among the gods, too, depend on honor- 
able scars. 



pRITIC I was for a beautiful woman, 

^ And spared not a shred of her patient endeavor; 

But coldly I said — 'tis not fit for the printers! 

Reviewing at length my precipitate folly — 

For she wept and declared, ne'er again will I try it — 

An angel appeared in the calm of the evening 

And lovingly talked to my heart in its sorrow: 

My brother, the least of the artists above you 
Is higher by far than you are to this pupiL 
What if her art bathe ugliest daubing? 
What if her song be a dissonant music? 



24 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

What if her poem be an ideal jumble? 

I'm ffrowino: her so to a loftier effort! 

And in the hereafter you'll be honored to know her. 

Not skill for the market is what I am after, 

But opening up her long-slumbering genius. 

So chill not my flow'rets in their earliest sprouting, 

But tenderly touch them witli hopeful persuasion; 

And lo ! on the morrow I'll show you a beauty 

That earth will be proud of to love and to worship. 



TEALOUSY-green-eyed-leer of self! Oh, the sick- 
^ ening distrust! Oh, the slow suicides! 

The dagger in the heart freezes there! Injured in- 
nocence cries, I wish I were dead! 

Oh, tlie dead in the grave-yard of jealousy! Doubt 
is the supervisor, locking and unlocking the iron 
door of hell! 

Oh, the deeps of hell! 

Jealousy is the madness of selfishness, the image of 
its hideousness mirrored in another, the reflex action 
of its own lust, the mood of insubordinate passion on 
fire of envy. 

Mistake it not for love. 

Call not prudence jealous, when refusing the peril 
of false alliance. 

Protection to virtue is heaven's sentinel at the gate 
of angels' faitli. 

Jealousy's eyes are very sore: She sees you in self- 
reflectiveness: She says, O miserable sinner! 

She has owl's eyes: Light daz^es them so she is 
blind, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. 



SOCIAL COMMON SENSE. 25 

Wliat shall we do for our sister? Have you any 
love-salve to loosen the films? 

Suspicion of one's honesty engenders the evil 
feared. 

Will you call a man a thief until he is proved 
otherwise ? 

The accusing mistrust suggests the temptation. 

Put a man on his honor, and all the good in him is 
active to keep your confidence. 

I love you means I trust you in love's purity to use. 



GOCIAL common sense is the best part of religion. 
^ I detest this heartless preaching — this pious 
daub! this hot-bed civility, put on for effect! 

Do you not know that the common fashions of virtue 
breed the promiscuities that alarm you so? 

Why do you court my society when you feel I pre- 
fer a genial distance? 

Why are you jealous, complaining I do not give 
you extra attention? 

Do you think I am so easily caught? Your suspi- 
cion neutralizes my admiration. 

We shall both be more agreeable to each other 
apart. We can rid ourselves so of a magnetic poison. 

Do not make a brew of your soul ; it sours us all. 



"\riCES of life react — a ghost of repentance from the 
^ tombs ! 

God has two methods — moral heroism and misery: 



26 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

The first is the angel of ministration from an im- 
mortal continent: 

The last is a mourning warner — God's dark wing of 
safety ! 

Is vice then equal to virtue, one and inseparable? 

Is evil a lesser good? is truth to-day false to-morrow? 

Principles do not change; relations may. 

Have I a right to perjure right? to disease myself? 

To circumscribe my neighbor's sphere of usefulness? 

How justly nature reacts against departure from her 
order! 

Eight side up! says the tree; roots down, limbs up! 

Wise as this? The lover of righteousness 

Cannot favorably affirm to the good of evils. 

No violating God's law, my moralist? 

But the law breaks us! grinds us fine! 

Cheat not thy soul with over-actions, nor under- 
actions. 

The rule of wisdom is the golden mean. 

The pure in heart are vigilant watchers over all its 
impulses. 

The holiest angels pain the most over defects of char- 
acter. 

Our business is to perfect the human race, 

ITot to perpetuate its miseries 

By an apology for their causes; by self-indulgence. 

There are two roads to a social hell: 

Soul-starvation and sensuous gluttony. 

There is one road to a social heaven: 

Temperance in all things. 



PKOFIT AXD LOSS PliAYER TEUTH. 27 

pEOFIT and loss! 
-■- Hast trampled on others' rights? 
Seduced the innocent? 
Outraged justice? 
" * ■^" Be honest once; 
"What is the pro tit? 

T)EAY now the prayer of a tried soul : 

-■- Sufficiently wise and morally courageous to 

to be true 
To nature in every relation of life. 

* * '-^ Honestly willing 
To give to another 
What by natural right is justly due. 

rpEUTH is soul-conviction, straight-forward speaks 
-■- without an oath; walks with firm step; the confi- 
dence in the heart makes the face sunny. 

The voice is round to fullness ; cuts clean, with 
music in its ring. 

Let me look into your eyes; I can tell the rest — 
whether you can be trusted. 

Why worry for truth? It goes fast as the world 
round its axis. Can it be injured? can it not take 
care of itself? Trying to steady it, O minister? Let 
the ark steady you! 

Why so much expenditure to born a soul before it 
is gestated? What can you do with your spiritual 
abortion? Why belabor the people who cannot un- 
derstand you? 

I tell you the world is just as good as it can be, 



28 IMMOETELT^S OF LOVE. 

down under tlie freezing fogs from the pits of Doubt. 
Out with you — this trying to do God's work! The 
trees are never anxious about growing; why should 
you be? Give vent to upward feeling! 

Truth will have birth in due season, 

If you let it grow in the light of reason. 

There are three ways by which to grow the world 
higher: By iconoclasm — ^legislation — beauty of ex- 
ample. Which of these is best? 

Oh, it is grand — this personality of yourself, com- 
ing and going at will — all the universe in you epito- 
mized ! 



T>LASPHEMEE of the laws of life, 

-■^ What is that stomach cloud? that slime? 

Tliat rotten phosphorescence? 

Askest thou -for God's light to enter, 

Whilst eaten with worms of the still? 

The mental mirror fouled, hell is close! 

So builds the castle of death! 

Behold the prisoner of scorn — 

In the cell of despair! 

But love never dies; she is so kind! 

The prodigal son hath his home in reserve. 

Beturn by the straight route: 

First pure! * * * 

O Temperance! we will build an altar to thee, 

And girt it round about 

With cherubim of Fidelity. 



GOD-DOTIBTEK ANTECEDENTS. 29 

r< OD-doubter, presuming to improve divine forma- 
^ tions! If this passion-wheel is so large and that 
moral- wheel so small, what is the best policy for 
safety? Cut down the large wheel to the small one, 
or bigger the small till it is big as the bigger? 

If the steam is great, strengthen the engine for 
swifter power. 

Is passion heavy? Load up the dome-brain with 
high thoughts; and the world will hail its Hercules 
who destroys all enemies of man. 

The mind-faculties are all lovers: orb them by fel- 
lowship: The all-over soul cometh of balance. 

Level up, not down; round out, not in. 

The line of waves of sound and light, and thought, 
too, and love, is from soul-centers circling wider, 
swashing the shores of eternity. 

Then the freest love is compatible with the purest 
morality. 



A NTECEDENTS, the data of Christian judgment? 
-^ It is so nice to belong to honorable stock! 

Did you ever study the genealogy of your Jesus — 
how the voluptuous Judah by a harlot became a 
lineal father? How the polygamous David stole 
descent by slaying the husband of a fair woman? 
How Mary, without the Jewish law permitting, was 
found with child of the Holy Spirit? How the manger 
cradled him? How the trade of a carpenter schooled 
him? How the cross was honored by his martyrdom? 

Did you ever think when your foot crushed a cater- 



30 IMMOETEU.ES OF LOVE. 

pillar, that it might, with jour mercy, have been a 
beautiful butterfly ? 

Did you ever read about the log huts of your 
ancestors, and their sheepskin garments; and the 
origin of the red pimples just under your eyelids? 

Alas! I am all mixed up by the blood of all races, 
ignoble and royal, bond and free, legitimate and ille- 
gitimate! 

My dear Christian friend, lend me some of your 
family virtue; for I am a sinner; and am so busy at 
reform I have no time to think of bloody atonements 
to make me a saint! 



riOMPElSrSATIOlSr has traveled long enongh on 
^ stilts ; board the cars ! 

Some there are who think they honor you by enjoy- 
ing your speech or book without paying for it. 

It is mercy to pull out the rotten teeth; and the 
ministration of Divine Providence to let mean souls 
starve till they learn good manners. 

The greed -mongers of money are also social leeches, 
sipping dry the fountains of friendship. 

Cast them out as unprofitable servants; blast the 
barren fig tree ; lop off all dead branches from the Tree 
of Industry. 

Every one must be a worker or die; for speculation 
is disreputable; labor is capital, and compensation to 
pocket and to heart is ratioed to what we give. 

I tell you, too, that Love never found herself in so 
bad a scrape as when she married a stingy man! 



COMPENSATION. 31 

I was sleeping on a sofa, 

Dreaming of my recent trophy, 

How by faith in right so cheery, 

I had blest the sad and weary — 

How my soul with patient labor 

Had revived my dying neighbor — 

How to hearts all sore and riven 

Better views of life had given, 

Eising by the mystic lever 

Of a loftier endeavor; — 

"WTien, inditing my decision, 

I was rapt in blissful vision, 

Till it seemed I'd reached the margins 

Of immortal Eden gardens, 

And were under the reposes 

Of the angels' loving roses, 

Where I heard a gentle breathing 

As if hands were noiseless wreathing 

Something sweet for very beauty 

Which was styled the Crown of Duty. 

Then as sunbeams ope the daisies, 

Or the morn night's curtain raises, 

I awoke in rest nnbroken. 

Too celestial to be spoken, 

Mnsic in my senses trilling, 

All my soul with rapture tilling. 

And I rose a bold defiant. 

In the right a moral giant. 

Guided by the holy angel 

Who had named me her Evangel! 



32 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 

Our compensation to love; 

The wronged are benefactors. 

A brother fell! * * 

Temptation sealed him! 

A proud man scorned him: 

The proud man's wife was sick: 

The fallen man was the physician of her choice. 

She was healed in body ; 

He was healed of proud flesh ! 

Love's justice is ever repeating itself. 

If Josephine is forsaken, 

Even for a nation's heir, 

Napoleon's star will set! 

O gods of temptation, try us ! 

O knowledge of our weakness, humble us! 

O tears of moral pride! O hot tears of remorse. 

Drop on the granite of our nature till it crumbles! 

O love- vine! climb over the ruined walls, 

And bloom on the other side! 

O love! our hearts were not strong enough 

To hold the anguish any longer! 

Here they are, pleading for the balm 

Of the spring-buds on the tree of Forgiving Love! 



TT ABIT!— is it your master? 

-^-*- The silken thread of a kite drew over the little 

wire, 
And this the strong cable of Niagara's bridge. 
Repeating falsehoods in jest? 



THEORY. 33 

/lie spceeli organs will be slimj! 
N"eglect is the law of weeds, 
And truthfulness of words the law of integrity. 
Sincerity is modest; how frank is her face! 



T^HEORY is so easy, and so many of us get fooled! 
-*- Owing to misplacements in the social uteri, we 
liave apes preaching the gospel, monkeys practicing 
law, physicians playing possom when caught killing 
their ]3atients, and the delectable pleasure of tyranical 
reformers at home! 

It is only the reaction of nature from the universal 
custom of marrying and begetting children, regardless 
of the popular idiocy of health and conscience. 

Angular folks are extra zealous in reform, outside 
of themselves; and have a special sympathy for the 
heathen. 

When socially paralyzed from the over-strain, they 
suddenly petrify as fossii for the next century cabi- 
nets. 

The farthest oif from harmony preach the most, 
pray the most, swear the most. 

It is one of the methods hnman nature has to 
<^xpress personal defect and right itself by experiment. 

Let me tell you a strange thing: By accident a 
loving woman married one of these unreformed 
reformers! She was poetical and warmed-sonled. He 
was a theorist, scolding her vehemently for want of 
zeal in Woman's Rights! 



34: IMMORTELLES OF LO . E. 

TTEAlir to the democratic head, woman will pro- 

-*-^ voke us 

To loftier manhood by her example: 

More a lover, because freer loved ; 

More a mother, because a stateswoman; 

More a wife, because of independence ; 

More an angel, because a human student. 

uhe harvest home of ages, 

Eipe with beauty, 
3ft foretold by ancient sages. 

Charged with duty, 
"When the sexes, in election, 
Shall in each find safe protection, 

Charged with duty! 

Never more to soul untruthful, 

For the beastial. 
But developing the youthful, 

So celestial. 
Till the love that they inherit 
Shall materialize in spirit. 

So celestial ! 

Death destroyed by living hoiyi 

So related, 
That earth's children, now so lowly, 

Are translated; 
Changed unconscious at life's portal 
Into forms of the immortal — 

Then translated ! 



FLOWERS ROBIN. 3 5 

T71L0WEES liave souls; thej will errow in the winterj 
-^ Wlien loving hands shut off the cold. 
How dean and sweet beside the outside snows! 
Give human nature freedom, room and love, 
And how beautiful! * ^ 
The lilies open upward to drink of sun-fonts; 
The tarry leaves are turned down; the pure white 
With its golden heart is queen of the lake. 
O passion-lilj of my soul ! 



T30BIJS" red-breast in the niche of a tree; a nest in 
■^^ the hollow of it for two squirrels; flies laying 
their eggs under the whites of the leaves; a school 
pic-nic under its shadow: what a world of love here! 

O birds! O squirrels! O flies! O boys and girls! 
O the singing, chirping, buzzing, playing! 

My ears close to the grass, I hear music in its 
growing. 

Up through the branches far away I am looking, 
and the green embosses the green of the immortal 
world beyond, where are lakes, and rivers, and seas, 
and islands, and happy people. 

Let us cure diseases of spirit and body by music. 
angels, baptize us in the Bethesda of music! 

Ye insane, intemperate, prodigal, weary-hearted, 
soul-weepers, come to the omni-healing asylum of 
music! 



J 6 ' IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

"pEOPIIECY is ingrained in the tissues of life — in 
-^ tlie very blood and nerve root. 

The seer knows the end from the beginning: Is 
not eifect aforesight discerned as easy as its working 
cause? 

I know a Horticulturist who laid his face close to 
a sprouting apple tree, and clairvoyantly saw it in 
full size, six years in advance, and tasted its fruit! 
His are all extra qualities, because he is a prophet. 

See that spider — how it weaves out its thread ahead, 
as a feeler for a bridge: Is it a prophet, too? 

My soul is all eye, seeing in a circle, as far future 
as past, when opened by spiritual light. 

The angels live in the realm of causation, and are 
all prophets: When we counsel yvl'\ them in pure 
fidelity to spirit laws, they will tell us v/herein is the 
path of danger and of success. 



"T^AKK! no hand to withold you? 
^ Dark! no eye to behold you? 
The pavilion of shadow is the tent 
Of angels on their vigils bent! 

young man! in your covert hiding, 

1 see your mother ! she is gliding 
Thither ! there she is ! She appears 
With a mantle on ; * * 
And her face is wet with tears ! 



ELEC'ITVE AFFINIITES. 37 

TTILECTIVE affinities! I think them the righteous- 
^ ness of nature; that God is building so a body 
to live in. 

All the gases courting each other, forming beauty 
in the womb of chaos: How splendid — the chem- 
istries! 

Wonder if our world's great heart ever makes a 
mistake, or promiscuizes her lovers ? 

Sweeter is the nectar of the maples for the frost on 
the roots. 

Do you like the black specks on the gold of the 
lily's petals? and the inimitable pink on the sea 
shells? 

I think it was all elective; and the plaint, too, of 
the- cuckoo, so lonely searching for a mate in the spring. 

Mature knows no divorces; so I feel confident our 
'Mother and Father will never orphanize me, their 
great baby. 

If you pretty 23lease, have no more non-elects in 
society, that you may damn somebody. 

The soul elects, not the body; this is only its crys- 
taline home to live in — the most beautiful thing in 
the universe. 

The soul is eternal, maker and lord; hence needs 
not the care of its incidents. The enduring part has 
not the claim for our sympathy equal with the tran- 
sient. 

What may be good for the soul may be injury to 
the body. You must not gaze long at the sun with 
the naked eye: You can safely devote your soul to 
light. 



38 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Were all the loves of the soul focalized outwardly 
to the body, — what think you, would it not burn? 

I tell you the spiritual life has to be toned very 
delicately through media, in adaptation to our needs, 
else the inspiration will destroy us as lightning the 
roof it strikes. 

So there is quite a difterence in degree between the 
functional freedom of the soul and the functional 
freedom of its body. 

The bee may cull its honey anywhere; but the hive 
must be stationary and sound to treasure it up. 

The soul draws what belongs to it for conservation 
of needs; extracts the elements of health from the 
bosom of all so,uls and is content, ]^ow it is qualified 
to bless the hungry, as it feeds itself; shed its fra- 
grance, as it is gathered with holy economy into the 
secret chambers of its orderly house. 

To grow the immortal angel — this is the mission of 
earth-living; and all the essences of life are God's 
mechanics here, as dew and sunbeams are to the 
plants. 

]^ature is so wise! She denies for the sake of gain- 
ing the most. She prohibits by the unwished-for 
peril of motherhood; by unsexing you, O virgin 
woman, if you offer the casket so ; by gathering dis- 
eases from the diverse alkali to warn you, O man, 
against departure from the economy of chastity of 
habit. 

And if we follow attractions always, where w^ere 
the virtue of self-denial and the glory of the greatest 
victory in earth or heaven — that of passion disciplined 



ELECTIVE AEnNITIES. 39 

to a delightful ministration to the gods of physical 
beauty and moral intellect? 

What! free, my friend, to appropriate the sphere 
that attracts? 

Is the beauty my neighbor hath bloomed by care 
mine to pluck because I admire? I would not so do 
were I pure in heart. 

The most loving are most sought; and so the greater 
peril, if freedom is license. 

These are the questions of Love at the bar of Jus- 
tice: What will protect your innocency? What will 
ennoble your life with sweetest graces ? 

Here she loveth as bird its song, as dew its prismatic 
hues. 

Doth she graft incongruities — unlikes — as roses to 
thistles? 

Pure water to pure water, and it is pure still; and 
love to love grows cleaner, brighter as gold in the 
using. 

These are the signs of adultery that have no marital 
forgiveness: 

When the body is offered a sacrifice to courtesy; 
when woman revolts against her ensnarement; when 
the seed of lust is planted which she abhorreth; when 
the alliance bringeth disease. 

O Unsexologists ! garnishing the hells to make them 
respectable! 

The libertine a gentleman, and the woman — what? 

A hand for him, and a dagger for his victim! 

With my daughters in the parlor, and she in a mad 
house! 



40 ijymoRTEiJ.ES of love. 

I am sad to-day, because of human vampires ; they 
were burn starved! The habitual thought of the man, 
that all women are his to use whom he can control, 
his wife hating no prerogative over the rest, impreg- 
nates illicit commerce in the very germ ! And if she, 
poor woman, loves him not fully — as she cannot under 
liis usurpations — but has her heart in another bosom, 
behold, a vampire is born, sexually insane! 

What sex? It makes no difference. It is a para- 
site! I cannot afford the magnetic depletion. Stand 
off ! you would eat up my very heart, were I to offer 
my services so. Off ! I tell you. The hells made you, 
O heir of angelhood ! You I will save, but not by 
indulgence. Enter the generative heaven of augel 
ministry, and be spirit born anew. So shall your hells 
be quenched by the pure river of the water of life. 

Out! ye damnations! — ye false marriages! — ye 
nightly prostitutions ! We are to have a Paradise 
right where the damned gods have reigned a thousand 
Christian years! 

Woman cannot appropriate what is unwelcome; 
cannot factorize it into generative reciprocity. The 
seed lies there dead, breeding poison; instinctively he 
hates it and her with loathing, and she has lost, too, 
her own self-respect. 

Have I told you a secret of marital sorrows? and 
will you learn wisdom, O social prisoners, that regener- 
ation begins in freedom and is molded in love? 

Is every impulse of feeling a moral aspiration ? 
every whim of a child encourageable? 

For my happiness, says the inebriate, sipping the 



FTiF-OTlVJi; AFFINrnES. 43 

cuj); for mine, says the gambler, wittingly stealing 
money; for mine, says the libertine, poisoning tho 
fountains of life! 

Benevolence in motive is not always wise in deed. 

Pleasure may not be profit; nor policy, gain. 

True love never asks. What may I have therefor? 
never thinks. What may I enjoy? If you seek the 
sweets of love to reserve it, so much of it is lost to 
you! 

Self-denial is self gained. 

Married in moral love, each lives for the other. 

Any personal neglect to myself injures you: I am 
impelled to fidelity. What can I do to make you 
healthful, useful, peaceful? 

The living sacrifice is reciprocal: your ambition of 
love to confer its blessing, awakens my loftiest ideal 
of manhood. 

Competitors in this nobility, we court the hours, 
and sun all tasks with good cheer. 

Responsibility is involved in every impulse of our 
being. 

Each step hath its ring of solemn judgment; each 
breath its woe or joy. 

Tlie man who plants a tree owes it his care; who 
enters a circle owes it respect; who assumes a social 
relation owes it his protection. 

There is a beautiful rule that covers many ways: 
The privilege of health with odor of example. 

So if the parties consent and there is no trespass on 
others' rights? 



4:Z IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

Do you ask me? Well, I must first look into your 
souls — both yours and hers. 

I see — harmless in purposes, with self-denial plead- 
ing at the altar of virtue. 

This is the law of spheres, remember: No alikes 
in all respects. Two cannot be loved with the same 
emotions. Is the sensuous magnet the stronger? 
Think, now! Yielding, you will follow it away from 
the weaker. 

Bring to bear your honor; your sense of righteous- 
ness. 

And ask yourselves: Will it contribute to health- 
ful beauty of mind and body, moral content to the 
aifections, serenity of conscience in the after-reviews? 

Is there strength of protection, fidelity of friend- 
ship to guard against the coming peril, and save the 
feebler spirit from the cold? 

There are watching stars, and the sweet silence hath 
ears! Yes, and the pulses of angels' hearts touch 
yours, inquiring if each physical pleasure arrays the 
character with a whiter vesture; will the reaction jar, 
or tune, the melody of the years of eternity? 

And here I leave you both alone, under human 
light that shadows heaven, under the claims of our 
dear humanity, under the eyes of angels that w^eep so 
much over our strange world, to prove to us that 
purity with liberty is the bud of love in their happy 
land. 

See it — that snake's head peering in the tree? The 
long creature is coiled up in that niche! Tlie bird 



ELECTIVE AFFINrrrES. 43 

above it, on the top branch singing, is in a tremble, — 
drawing nearer to the charming reptile! 

Shoot a bullet into the monster's head! What 
business has he there? But the bird falls with it, so 
strono^ is the lure! Dead? I^o, but it wdll never sins: 
SO sweet again! 

Ho! rescue that minstrel maiden from the Serpent 
of Lust! The daring brings the world's reward of 
lilthj names stewed in the vats of scandal! But no 
matter; the right is sure to win at last. 

JN'ow loosen the magnetic power that she may be 
free to dare all sin with the meltins: fires of sono^. 

Ah, ha! you were precipitate, trusted too strong; 
unsupported, she lied in peril into the rear fort of 
Matrimony! The consecrated water there is fresh 
from Lethean springs: You will be forgotten now, 
and gratitude will change to scorn, for her husband 
demands an animal's right, to swallow body, soul and 
song! 

It is so, my brother, and you must expect it — th-it 
friendship will sour in the sloughs of selfishness ; be 
just and merciful, for the soul is holy still, though 
slimed in its misfortune. 

What an insult is this to heaven — that our incidents 
shall supplant our virtues ! — that the happy freedom 
of young life shall lose its genius of hope in a rela- 
tion naturally divine, but artificially enslaved by the 
iron-masked goddess of St. Custom! 

O angel of Freedom! sun-god of a E'ew Day, 
purpling the clouds till the night of our social death 
laughs at its dreamings! O angel, starred all over, 



44 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 

with great liglit blazing from thy forehead, ride on in 
thy chariot of conquest! 

We shall hear thy spirit rap at the outer gate of 
our guarded life! see the trailing beauty of thy tread 
in the black aisles of marital bastiles ! hear thy voice 
that commandeth — Emancipation 1 

Hark! hies are sawing on the chains! sighs are 
turning to whistles and groans to songs! 

'Tis coming up the grades of the great highways, 
orient, golden, eternal in glory — the Morn of 
Freedom ! 

HTEALIKG virtue? There is no law for it! If 
^ forced to yield, the purpose of the heart remains: 
It is no prostitution of soul, but the calamity of our 
social life. 

A poor wife in bonds, hating her immolation, io 
holy still: A woman in poverty, driven to this sui- 
cide of passion, weeping over the pollution of the 
casket, has an angel side left, kept fresh by tears. 

Oh, these precious diamonds, trodden under profane 
feet! Oh, these martyrs of love unrequited, crncified 
in the Social Golgothas to show onr criminality before 
the pitying angels, and how true is woman's aifection 
to purity in darkness and filth, in woe and death! 

Oh, the stormy hours of wrath to come, that shall 
reveal the keepers of the prisons! 

Oh, the beautiful doors in heaven, opening soon to 
let the truest angels of earth come in! 

Oh, the Liberty, hastening to bloom the lilies in 
the mud! 



EELATIVES MAGDALENE. 45 

OELATIVES in a quarrel about legacies and bound- 
-^^ ary lines, with envy of each other's success! 

Try to amend by a religious revival, confessing you 
are incorrigible sinners, and you will be believed this 
time! 

Kindreds by blood degenerate by mixing into fools; 
and magnetisms chemically morose themselves that 
have no electric fire of contrast. 

Let me out beyond the old homestead to grow: 
West, South, anywhere, but the ruts where our little 
go-carts snailed along when we were boys and girls. 

Strangers are often nearer kin in soul than a whole 
family of cousins. 

Ask the swarming bees if it is not so; and the 
parent eagles that drive their young out of their ter- 
ritory to build on other cliffs among the storms. 
' i^ature's changes and crossings lose no love ; they 
conserve it, as diverse currents the health of the sea. 

This clan-life of family and nationality — how it 
dwindles and fades as we sail away out toward the 
farther-continents of the Universal! 



■jtr AGDALEKE ! O my sister, Magdalene ! 
lU. yfijQii a child all the people loved you much! 
You were beautiful then, and happy all day! 
'Twas but yesterday when you wandered from home! 
We all hunted and found you sleeping in the woods! 
l^ot a soul had a harsh word, darling, not a word ! 
Those tired feet were so sweet to rub in our warm 
hands! 



46 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Your soiled garments all torn disgraced not the least! 
We all kissed jour hot cheeks so fevered with jour 
tears ! 



You are a woman now, and a want has led jou to 

wrong! 
Yon have sold jour virtue for bread — all for the 

bread 1 
IS'ot a person seeks jou for love; thej saj jou are 

lost! 
Ever J door is shut against jou — mj Magdalene! 
Oh, the judgment coming soon, with its recompense! 
All the lost ones required then at our hands and 

hearts ! 



mj Magdalene! I found jou in the busj street! 
Let us talk right here, — this curb-stone is friendlj to 

us! 

"We are watched; the crowd do call us guilt j as them- 
selves ! 

Take mj arm; no place allowed in all the markets 
round 

For a righteous deed; a house jonder that opes its 
door t 

It is mine; come in; I love jou, O mj Magdalene! 

1 was tempted, but have overcome at last; 
So rest here safe! 

Tlie elixir of life 
Is not found in experiment with love 
In affinities, incongruous and mixed! 
I will show JOU the primal of a good life: 



MAGDALENE. 47 

You must carry up the earthly as sun the dews 
To rainbows in the cloud for a fresher shower. 
There is j)romise in the flame of your freest love, 
When its heat doth enflower the intellect 
And exhale its healing balm in the Edens 
Of morality; and when two souls, with heads 
Bowing to the blast, are locked arm in arm, 
Closer entwined for the trial of it. 
Know now what a betrothal is, in truth, 
And the preciousness of its righteous care. 

O Mao^dalene! come to the landins:! 
Come from life's merciless stranding! 
Come from the waves of heart-sadness. 
From the breakers of Jealousy's madness, 
And And how divinely related 
Are souls that in freedom are mated. 

Did I once condemn you, as pilot. 

And call you a miserable harlot, 

"^hen you were drowned in the brine 

Of a deeper temptation than mine? 

Did I repulse you when trying 

To get your unlawful supplying 

Of love that refuse you a living 

In a world of our Father's great giving? 

Wlien you loved in a more righteous passion 

Than is known in the houses of fashion? 

Here's my hand — 'mong the breakers, my sister, 
More honorable far for its blister. 



48 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Up, strong on my bosom reposing, 
Your arms round my neck fast closing. 
Your clieek to my cheek, coMly dripping, 
Your lips to my lips for life-sipping. 
Attracted from passion's unresting, 
Keturn as a dove to her nesting, 
And live to encircle the lowly 
In love of the free and. the holy. 



II/TAD souls — so many of them! crazy as a herd of 
^'-*- bellowing cows before the fresh blood of the 
culinary ox. 

Feel damn, full of cursing, relapsing into abandon? 
Your soul says thus — I am starving! 

She is lashing you with the scorpions of spiritual 
hunger which you have breeded in her bosom; and 
you wonder at adulterous excesses, as the famished 
eagle gorging on the flesh of its victim. 

O famines! O gluttonies! O insanities! O riot- 
ings of lust, the wild dance and scream! O custoixis 
that transfix us on these rocks of ruin! 

Go to God's All-Cure of Love; feast the eyes with 
beauty; drink down to the pure of soul! and ask. 
How deep? 

AVliat is this misgiving in my soul? this doubt of 
all things? this paled night of slumberless despair? 

The city is a wilderness to me: men are trees dead 
in the heart, and women are petrified mosses. 

The clouds look cold; the sun, angry in their 



MAD SOULS. 49 

chinks; the ground sullen, as if rocking above vol- 
canoes. 

You better keep away from me! 

It is good for me — this hating of things out of 
joint — myself sent by express. 

Your social torrid breeds too much; ice is palatable 
in sultry weather. 

Am I cold? It is only in body: the soul is cleaner 
for it. 

Does not the motherly earth bare her bosom to the 
freezing wind, to extract the cold? Lo! in the morn- 
ing the beautiful frost, and then the pleasant day of 
autumnal summer. 

What is this philosophy that pains me so? Souls 
in love are mutual mirrors : Do I see unfaith's quality 
of myself reflected in you? 

Ah, I have found it — the scalpel that cuts out the 
spiritual cancer in my naughty heart: 

My mistrust engenders its occasion. My fear brings 
the result I dread. My suspicious thinking creates 
by you the action that hurts me so. The fevered 
imaginations of my burning love, not yet in poise of 
self-control, recoils to its wintry counterpoise of fierce 
discontent, so cold you are driven for safety into the 
sunlight of another soul. 

The soul-starved are soul-starvers ! 

Open me to heavenly love, that I may let out the 
cold that so freezes us! Put your hand into my heart 
and take out its polished bars of ice! 
4 



50 iivoiokteli.es of love. 



TriEGIN" in purity, her heart was full of beautiful 
* 2:)ictures of life: 
She did not dare to open it. 

Did you break the seals by the throbbing of her hand, 
As you held it, till its palm trembled in yours. 
And a blush on her cheeks reported the sunbeam in 

her soul? 
(3 man ! bethink in the silence of honor, as she trills 

to love: 
Would you for worlds stain such chastity? 
If you feel a passion to foul that fountain, 
If you ask it by word, or look, or thought, 
You are the serpent in Eden! 

Her instincts read you; she loves you less for that; 
And that night, even if she escape your coil, 
She weeps— for you first and then for herself — 
Poor girl, whom the angels know so well! 

^ ^ When the habit is pure to health, 
A maiden's instinct is clean as the white of the sky 
Embossed with rainbows in the cloud: 
The trust of your words fortifies her integrity. 

The rill is not harmed for the filtering sands ; 

Nor is her soul tarnished for contact 

In life's battle against temptation. 

She acquaints herself with young men from very love^ 

And her presence awes them to worship of her 

virtues. 
So shall she select whom her heart entwineth — 
The immaculate soul of manliness. 
Upon your peril, forbid not the banns! 



jViakried. 51 

MAEKIED? AVliat for? a wife to brew and lust 
with? 
A husband to lean upon? O starved souls! 
O bodj-lumps of muscles with spiritual gout in the 

nerves! 
O rotten stumps of early beauty! 
O wrinkles on the face of despairing hopes, 
Plowed much deejDer on the soul! 

When first married, demanding, 

Excessive in aifection: 

What the products, O parents, 

Mourning o'er the waywardness of your children? 

This sin-tempting to marry so! 
O Saharas in our parlors! 
Living for self destroys it! 

What if an angel visit that home, and one is saved 
from slavery to rejoice in the free love of spiritual 
purity; does not the demon of Suspicion plat a 
crown of thorns upon that brow — jealous even of the 
ministering angel? 

And Fashion is shocked; 
But Nature's not mocked! 
She frees her strong souls 
As morn the niglit ghouls ! 

Under the roofs, under the darks. 
Under the hoofs of human sharks. 



62 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

A woman is immolated 

In the death that's never dead ! 

O horrors and fears! 

O sorrows and tears! 
Lest a child may be born of such lusts 

On her bridal bed! 
O shams of pretension! 
O arts of prevention! 
O crime unrepenting! 
O hell unrelenting! 
Living despite the stabs beguiled, 
And the after plagues of a murderous child I 
O these miscarriages 
Of our false marriages! 
O these pollutions 
Of home prostitutions ! 
O these spell-bounds 
Of these hell-hounds! 
O this heart-riven 
That's never forgiven! 

Whence the drunkard? 
Passional forces exhausted by excess: 
Artificial stimulus to supply the waste: 
I thirst! cries the foetal child! 

Whence the hypocrite? 
From a loveless conception 
With deceptive modesty! 
From a churchal recluse 
That hides the secret! 



MARKDED. 63 

Wlience tlie tyrant? 
From masculine antliority 
With a forced maternity! 

Whence the human vampire? 
From hist's command 
In insatiate demand! 

Is such a union 

The safeguard of the innocent? 

The fire of one passion 

Inflames its neighbor's fury! 
Lust is a mother and her harlots 
Are jealousy, revenge and malice! 
Shall these be kept in the same fold 

A lamb with Vv^olves 

All torn and cold? 

By being a brute he has lost his privilege! 
Test his love now by stern denial, 
And feel how bitter is his rebuke! 
Learn thus what is yours to save, 
Wliat is his, when the prize is gone! 

A beautiful woman is weeping! 

She is pale and haggard! 

She has even staggered, 
Wliile frightful dreaming in her sleeping! 

What is your history, also? — 



54 IMMOETELLIS OF LOVE. 

Wlien weary and lonely, I would be caressed, my 
hnsband mistakes my love, overwhelms me with 
passion, and I react into fighting disgust. Was it my 
mother's mistake? I came unasked, and therefore 
ask nothing he would give ! May be I am the fruit 
of marital prostitution in parentage, unsexing by 
transmission, for my child is also defective! 

O sister of fate! 
ISTecessity's fate! 
Mismated and maiityred in birth, 
Your soul is still precions in worth! 

If this suicide inherited 

Is never well merited. 

It may be a wise plan 

To be untied from that man, 

And be married in love 

To an angel above! 

When we grow, it is either apart or together: 
If apart, why bridge from hell over hither? 
The chasm knows no foreclosing 
While self in free lust is reposing! 

The world is constantlj^ making its subjects 
For polygamous Abraham 
To damn! 
What a mourning of the Pharasee Scribes 
Over the sweet Ilagars of the slave-tribes 
Tliat are nearer kin to the angels of virginity: 
Ishmaels are born of a tri partite consent, 



JklAEEOED. 55 

Begotten outside of the days of Lent, — 
Wild men of moonlight nativity! 

Is this our social win 

That bubbles up from within? 
It is nature seeking equilibrium — by regrets ! 
The concubinage which our false marrying begets! 

Our passional fits 

By such haphazard hits 
Bollick down the muddy rivers of generations, 
To freshen and. cleanse the respectability of nations! 

When the healthful Plebeians, 
Singing the peans, 
Of a conjugal insanity — 

The whites, blacks and yellows, 

Half-civilized, out-lawed, free fellows, — 
Bound in to regain a dr^omed humanity! 

O horrors of these secret leases ! 

O horrors of this descent of species! 
Cities of assignation where all the ^^irtues rot, 
Where the fire is not quenched and the worm di eth not! 

Mad with the wrath of jealousy ! 

Insane for the syphilis of damnation! 

Sprinkled red on the pillars of legislation! 

Mingle therewith the lire- water of intoxication, 
And meet with revengeful satisfaction 
What money will buy to save from starvation ! 

Congressmen, business men, old men with gray and 
silver locks, 



56 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

Young men witli spotted faces, dressed in gay and 

seedj frocks. 
Men cliurclied in hjq^ocritic sin, their faith in Christ 

confiding, 
And pious bigots saying prayers, as to this hell they're 

sliding, 
And many a genteel father of a fashionable daughter, 
Are patron travelers thither to this den of moral 

slaughter! 

Thrust in thy sickle, O angel of the Just! 
Reap quick the harvest of the seed of social lust! 
Heap the marital fruiting that was nurtured by our 

sighs ! 
Reap the masculine tresjiass and monopolizing lies! 
Reap the battle impending on the land and on the 

sea! 
Reap the revolutionizing of our nation's liberty! 

Mother-Nature is weeping; her heart is bleeding; 
she is clothed in dyed garments ; she has reached the 
red gates of the fountains of life; and this is her 
commandment : 

'No more children by unwelcome! 
l^J'o destruction of germs! 
No fruit that is not loved! 
ISTo imion that is not holy! 



FOCI TO AN ORBIT. 67 

TTIOCI to an orbit, two of them, else no motherhood 
-^ to planets, no motion, no growth! 

Nature abhors perfect circles; she loves angles, too, 
blended wdtli them. 

Hate legitimate as love: Moses was the minister- 
ing angel of Jesus, 

The lightning loves the cloud, out of which to drive 
down to us the rain of blessing. 

Compromising for a peace? Sin and unsin in 
coition? 

Gods of sedition, jar the harmony! 

Oh, for the sublime morality of righteous indigna- 
tion, sending daylight through a black-mailed heart! 

This is the rotating process, rounding off excrescences 
to the ellipses of character. 

Patience, then, my soul, patience! The thorns will 
not hurt when the roses shed odors to their tips. 

Yonder lake is still; the bending heaven embosses 
it with pearl. 

Too long so and the water sours, and is full of 
vermin. 

It needs wind and cold rain to preserve it. 

JSTature abhors a long equilibrium ; she acts by the 
unbalance of electric forces; and so is growth. 

Wlien the air is a dead harmony, look out for a fall 
in the mercury. 

The soul will contract a moral scurvy, if it cannot 
relax from satieties. 

When you feel monotonous, an all-over surfeiting, 
go right away ! 



58 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

To the woods, lio ! to tlie birds, to new scenes, new 
society, new experiences. 

Fearful of the results, O coward? l^ot trust your 
companion, or yourself, in the art of growing young? 

What is the market value of such love? 

Give length of wire in the helix of affection, and 
its magnetic j^ower is increased. 

Free to shed its perfume, if such love could visit 
the sun, every ray of light would report its constancy. 



TKTUITIOlSr knows the secrets 
-*- Of the hidden souls of nature: 
Finds the threads that lead to fortune: 
Reads tlie histories of nations 
On the dust of ancient battle: 
Traces thought from love to motive, 
Weighs it in the scale of Justice. 

Tlie immortal dweller in us 
Fashions all the plastic substance 
Of the house in which we're living, 
Like the bird its nest in summer. 
Oh, how beautiful I'll make it! 
Says the faithful spirit artist. 
But the dolting crowd derides it. 
Daubs upon it filthy mortar. 
Till the artist in a passion 
Scowls as angry cloud of thunder, 
Crystalized upon the features. 
So we are not what we're seeming; 



INTUITION. 59 



We are better than our seeming. 
Look ye then with ejes of mercy, 
O ye builders of the human, — 
Look with Intuition's vision 
Down into the soul of Beauty! 

Sad I pondered on my love-life 
And my right of its possession. 
For 1 saw that others claimed her. 
Passioned with an equal ardor. 
Loved she this man for his music; 
This for goodness; that for honor. 
This for bravery; that for w^isdom. 
So I asked, Where's my advantage? 
Am I only just a lover — 
Ranking with your other lovers, 
Estimated as I must be, 
Lacking in the things you worship? 

In the sorrow of my question. 
Fast asleeiD I sunk in vision, 
And I heard an angel saying: 
Much below par, my dear brother? 
If so, and art still her loved one. 
All her love is pure, unselfish. 
And thy union is eternal! 
Were her love but for thy person, 
For thy beauty or thy manner. 
It might savor some of envy. 
Or a lustful idol-worship; 
If art loved without a reason, 



60 1MM0RTELI.ES OF LOVE. 

Loved despite thy human weakness, 
Oft deplored in heart-misgiving 
Thou art hers in soul relation. 
Love ineffable in nature 
Cannot classify affection. 
As the billows grow in water, 
As the breeze is in the blowing. 
As the heat is in the sunlight. 
As the heart is in the bosom. 
As the faith is in the trusting. 
As the life is in the body, 
As the soul is in the spirit. 
So her love is thine forever! 
Not for character she loves thee, 
I^ot for price of man's position — 
I^ay, the riddle thou art solving 
Is the life of love in loving! 

Stiffly circumspect and moral! 
Any soul here to feel after? 
Any weakness for our mercy? 
Any sin to be forgiven? 
Any love that's worth the loving? 
Passioned in his erring brother — 
Goods and evils in a compound! 
Prodigal of time and money! 
Did you notice, too, his weeping 
At the news of the misfortune 
That befell the passing stranger, 
"When his pocket-book was stolen, 
And his life was next the forfeit? 



INTUmON. 61 



He's a poet — j)layful, sunny. 
I have seen him in his sorrow, 
The sublimest of repentance. 
What's the matter with our brother? 
Wants a criticism, think jou? 
Living free, he oft encounters 
Barricades of meanest customs; 
So he is a fevered swimmer, 
Into Melancholy's Ocean! 
His is madness of the lion, 
Biting bars of his dark prison! 
His Archimedes' strong lever 
Lifting up the world to freedom! 
All the pure and modest women 
Love so much this sinless sinner! 
All the lynxes of the churches, 
All the hollow stumps of churches, 
All the fashionable ladies. 
All the men of creedal honor. 
All the ministers of pulpits 
Are so savage to this brother! 
But the angels trust him, weeping. 
Trust in love the soul-exchanges, 
Trust the good that yet will triumph: 
So there is another party — 
Angels of forgiving mercy — 
To rebuke, O pious Christians! 

There are minds that see the flower 
In the stalk before 'tis budded; 
But accusers see it only 



62 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

When it's open in the blooming: 
Then thej pay for tirst neglecting 
Bj a jostling 'gainst the gard'ners! 
But nobility's fair flower 
Bows and opens all its petals, 
Shedding perfume without measure, 
For the world's eternal blessing! 

See the grape\dnes dipping rootlets 

Into soil beyond the fences: 

See the grasses peeping greenly 

Out between the chinks of granite: 

See the flocks of sheep and cattle 

Lying close beside the river: 

See the starved-soul nestling nearest 

That strong soul of faith in goodness! 

See the wives and husbands freely 

Following the spiritual magnets, 

I^ot regarding e'en their pledges! 

Whither is this social drifting? 

What will come from this strange mixing? 

What's the meaning of this battle? 

What are spirits doing with us? 

I am prompted in my honor 

To install the best example: 

I'm resolved to beat my brothers 

In the privileged test of duty, 

In the ownership of freedom. 

In the mutual love of giving. 

In the trust of faith's reviving, 

In the life of souls uniting. 



iNTcmoN. 63 



In the ano:els liolv unions. 
In tlie innocence of virtue. 

Once I saw a ^vife so weaiy, 
Sad and pale and often sighing; 
But her husband was all vigor, 
Roughly strong and coarse in fibre. 
Did he live at the expenses 
Of her vital forces, think you? 
When she met that noble stranger 
Of large soul and generous feeling, 
Who had suffered by oppression. 
And had gained a higher freedom, 
Loving virtue for the trial; — 
When she met the noble stranger — 
I will tell you all the story! — 
'Twas not lawful, I remember, 
But she did rest in his presence. 
Best her head upon his bosom, 
Best upon that great-s.ouled bosom, 
Best a moment, leaning gently. 
Sighing so and weeping strangely! 
Can you tell me now the meaning 
Of that clinging and that resting. 
Of that sighing and that weeping? 

Love hath polarized its center 
Inspirational in freedom. 
With its tangent of ambition 
For the circuit-faith of motion. 
Let her dance in swift cotillions 



6a IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

With tlie planets in their orbits, 
Holding safe the central magnet 
Bj the freest revolutions. 
Let her bathe in sunny fountains, 
In the bloom of angel-summers, 
In the fragrance of their roses, 
In the healthful balm of Eden. 
All the deeps of distant spaces. 
All the charms of starry bowers. 
All the glory of the heavens, 
All the hearts in angel bosoms, 
Only blend in closer union, 
Trusting souls that love each other. 
Dearest when the love is freest. 
Fairest when it scatters blessings, 
Strongest when the love of freedom 
Keeps the purity of passion, — 
[N'earest when progressing highest, 
Like the lark that sings the sweetest 
When the dew is on her ^^inions. 
Back she comes with inspiration. 
Laden with a light magnetic, 
With the health of beauteous girlhood. 
With a heart of sweet attraction, 
Kesting on a throbbing bosom. 
Calm as star on crest of evening. 
In the loves of soul-responses, 
Every touch a trill of rapture. 
Only known and felt by lovers 
Who are free, and pure, and holy. 



HUMAN SIGHS. 65 

TTTT IVTA'N " sighs ! south, winds from Paradise, fanning 



-^-^ our savage wills. 



Woman's impassioned breath melts the snow-flakes 
in us — neutralizes the acids; her tears trouble us so, 
we return home to the warm fireside of our lost affec- 
tions ! 

She has nothing to saj: is still as Venus in the 
evening sky: her bosom heaves in tidal emotion in 
that night of confidence; and we rise to a splendid 
daring. 

Enchantress of our ambitions, she makes society 
as the floral soul doth its ministering petals. 

What stings the cup down so deep, flowing in 
purple courses? What wounds it so every lunar 
month? What has red-stained these Sybilline Leaves 
in Hymen's bower to give the oracle of warning — 
My maternity must not be stolen? 

Weep freely, scarlet angel! — the red rain is so wel- 
come in marital anxiety! precious pain, prismic ere 
the daylight hath revealed it. 

In honor keep her secret, O husband with a soul: 
Cover her in your bosom safe as the bleeding red- 
breast in her nest under mated wings: She will be 
healed so. 

Heaven hath ordained you the Gabriel of Eighteous- 
ness to guard these mystic gates against all trespass, 
yourself the fiercest enemy! Open and shut lovingly, 
lest the hinges fail in the swinging, to your everlast- 
ing shame and sorrow! 

Have you such a husband, O trembling child? 
Trust him I the batteries are locked secure, even when 
5 



66 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

the storm is abating: The steam under the j)assional 
valves where the fire burns is under wise governance: 
Be calm — -no evil lurketh where the Conjugal Angel 
of moral courage keeps the key. 

She will be so beautiful afterwards — covering jou 
almost from sight in her gratitude, like the boughs ol 
the balsam hiding its support under the firry green, 
heavy with weeping showers. 

How that angel with noiseless tread unlocks the 
consecrated chamber! and the Bride descends to meet 
the Bridegroom! 

There is divine right of commerce when sacred to 
health and purity; and the child of love is our new 
Christna! 



¥ 



OMAN loves but one in fullness of soul-confi- 
dence. She is so obstinate in her love; demands 
comj)lete and solid possession, capturing you all over, 
if you advance so! She draws you stronger than you 
calculated. 

Do you apologize to escape by saying, I am not 
worthy? She hates that and storms it out of you. 
Why, she takes you for a perfect jewel;, sees no lack 
in you, feels none; gives her whole self to you. Be a 
hero now, and you have won a queen! 

Can you help loving her, so free, so earnest, so con- 
fident, so beautiful? 

Have you, O man, measured a wife as you did your 
harlequin, and thought her no more to you than a 
convenience at night? It is puite difierent, sir, and 



yonr reserve is a sure revelation of bad odor. Slie 
may discover it! What will you do ? my dear unfor- 
tunate! 

Go wasli thyself in thef Jordan of Eepentance; 
secrete thyself for a season among the balsams of 
Temperance; sprinkle thy whole person with the 
dews of Prayer; thence come, clothed in chaste gar- 
ments, and offer, brave in conscious worth, an unstained 
hand with a star in it, and she will overwhelm thee 
\\dth gratitude, kaleidoscopic in beauty and prolific in 
affections as the bosom of the floral valley among the 
mountains. 

She will be to thee ever the same in soul; bat 
changing by emotions in eye-flashes and cheek-tinges, 
in attire and manners, in kisses and w^eepings over 
you — my bonny bird! 

Do you not see that dream playing on her face as 



on J 



she' lies beside you, left to faith's sweet aband 
What is she dreaming of? Why, you have waked 
her by looking inquisitive so; and you have no more 
surprise, for she locks her arms around your neck, 
saying, O my darling, all I can do is to love you ! 

Mistress of the household, the little things are so 
large in importance now; never before so beautiful a 
home, however humble, so kind, so economical! 

Ah, do you see the wrinkles' coming to that brow 
once as clear as the azure of morning? Care for you, 
for money, for the dear children, is also busy plow- 
ing there; but the rifts are full of gold dust which 
Love dusted freely, and a new light haloes the head 



68 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

and face, such as angels have in the autumns of their 
country. 

Il^ot changed: Only in riches of soul that draw 
forth a lofty ideal. She has not forgotten to say 
at evening, Do not stay out late, my dear. She has 
not ceased to fold herself in your bosom, reaching up 
her hand to your beard, and drawing you down to her 
lips with the familiar whisper of betrothal — I love 
you, oh, so much! 

I told you you had won a queen; and you have 
found her so, yea, the angel God gave to you; and 
have you returned her fidelity, and kept your heart 
close to hers all the time, responsive to each as delicate 
harp strings to the music of the zephyr? 

"IXriFE, O my wife! I am sad and weary: See 
' * where I have been stabbed by him I sought to 
bless ! 

Would that I were known as you know me. 

Let m.e hide just one night in the center of your 
heart where the pulses are. 

The Satan of Envy cannot find me there! 

There I nestled so safe, and heard the angel of 
music sing: 

In your heart of hearts you'll find me, 
Where the tendrils, pulsing, bind me, 

Sweet as flower that hugs the dew: 
In your mind I'm always thinking, 
All my being closely linking — 

Closely linking life with you. 



^VIFE. 69 



In your grief of soul-emotion, 
When tlie storm is on life's ocean. 

And you drink its bitter bane, — 
Wlieir the waves of trial, beating, 
Come with Slander's hollow cheating, 

I am guai'ding 'gainst the pain. 

In the hours of silent sleej)ing. 
As the stars are o'er you weeping. 

Every beam a vigil dart, — 
When you then in dreams have started, 
Searching for the dear departed. 

Close beside you is my heart. 

In the labors for a living, 
In the charity of giving 

Mutual competence and cheer, 
I am there with constant caring, 
In the sweat and conquest sharing, 

Sharing, too, the hope and fear. 

In your sicknesses and sorrows. 
In the shadows of the morrows, 

Dark'ning o'er your busy life, — 
In ambition's lofty trying, 
Eising by a self-denying, 

I am still your loving wife. 



IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 



TriKTUE! what so anticipates tlie joy of marriage? 
* O virgins, known in heaven! already are you 
plighted by the fatality of love's providence, ere your 
eyes felt the glow of the soul's reflection. 

The blooms of the cheeks, the thonght-sprays upon 
the brow, the gurgles of healthful laughter, are 
splendid recommendations. 

When mated by outward seals, the recollections of 
pure habits are the securities of mutual faith. 

The calm of integrity is so beautiful; the gleams 
of faces so respondent; the high purpose so laconic! 

Your wife clings closer to you, O man of heroism. 

Your husband is proud of you, O wife of purity. 

Attraction is so strong in this court of love, that 
bands of Hymen's angels cluster there to see if earth 
can not yet equal heaven! 

The first and after reposes in each other's arms are 
all hallowed to happy memories. 



"l/TAEEIAGE — all things sexed — organics, forces, 
-^^ thoughts, affections — polygamous or mono- 
gamic. 

Unconscious elements selecting and rejecting with- 
out revised statutes, in continuous potency of com- 
merce. 

Minerals jumbled into promiscuities. 

Grasses and grains in communes; forests in Chris- 
tian fellowship; many stamens for one pistil; many 
planets for one positive sun; many flocks for one 
master sire. 



MAEEIAGE. 71 

All life risen in the human — here is male and 
female, the mold and pattern; the heterogeneous and 
polygamous coronated. 

Man and woman in lordship; the animal subordi- 
nate to the rational; sex-commerce focalized to dual 
unity; variety in singleness of power; scattered enjoy- 
ments intensified to oneness for concentrated perfec- 
tion — the marital crown of life: 

Relative but not interrelative ; contrastive subordi- 
nation of temperament; forces reciprocal; duality in 
unity: progressive in ascending circles — physical, 
intellectual, industrial, economical, sentimental, moral, 
spiritual: the two consorts one angel, with eternities 
of love ever before them. 

The tapi^ed maples begin to decay; the young 
apple trees, stirred at the roots too often, are blighting! 

The blooming girl is married! A loss of rosy 
cheeks, a satiety of companionship, and — I want to 
go and see my mother! 

Weeping early in the morning, a walk alone among 
the trees in the evening, and — what if I should die? 

The poet has lost the muse; the artist, his skill of 
soul-engraving; the minstrel, that strain of divine 
cadence: dreams of the beautiful are all dead! 

I asked my experienced sister. What is fashionable 
marriage? and she said, A choice of spiders! 

The white marble and the lie engraved on it: the 
consumption, infanticide, death of bodies and morals 

Oh, choice of spiders ! 



72 IMMORTELLES OF LO^^E. 

Married according to statute, before fashion's shrine 
—for what? 

Caste, money and lust? 

The church said. Amen! 

They lived in pollution; their first born died, their 
second, their third, their fourth wronged also, bearing 
through life the psychometric brand of hate. 

And the church said. Continue! 

Married without priest or magistrate, themselves 
the seal in. defiance of courts, their souls the record 
in trust. 

Both humble, serious, weighing responsibilities, 
faithful, pure minded and free: their children loving, 
beautiful, noble. 

Wliich of these, O philosopher, is approved in the 
judgment of angels and of all good men and women? 

Wherefore this challenge to the State? 

Because it j3resumes to equal the soul's necessities 
and compel reverence to the idolatry of law which 
sensuous men have enacted as the full measure of 
human circumstances and conditions. 

What! debauched men at the sacred altars of soul- 
affections, pronouncing fate over what angels have 
sealed and forging legislative chains to bind the free- 
will offering of love? 

Out of the sunshine, O prostitutes of Higher Law! 

First, last and ever, the soul's rights are holy to 
love whom it must. 

Change your law to supply this demand, and it will 
be res]3ected: Presume nothing, protect everything 



MAEEIAGE. 73 

divinely human, and virtue mil thus be fortified as 
the sun-orb in walls of light. 

Be patient for this little span of life whose disci- 
plines temper to higher trust. 

The spiritual, like the century plant, is long in 
quickening and growing, and therefore the more beau- 
tiful and enduring. 

It is hidden deep — precious — all there is of life — 
worth all trial to develop it. 

Suiter rather than inllict suffering: Such martyrs 
are the crowned of God. 

Concede, then, but jeopardize no principle. 

The bending reed does not break for the wind, nor 
is the obliging soul a loser for its trial. 

Talk over the grievances dispassionately; forbear 
and wait; guard words and their accent, for the tones 
of the voice are diverse as soul-emotions. 

Essential defect is not in act, but condition. 

Life ill circumstance is the woven thread of the soul 
from the loom of affection to the ij:arment of use — 
all there is of the liberty of fate. 

If pilfer is in my desire, and scandal, and lust, and 
Propriety curbs them, be I any less a spiritual idiot? 

Tell me why this longing of soul^ this unwelcome 
gulf, not yet passed, over which we look so wistfully? 
this pleading — Do you love me? 

Oh, ho! the soul's keys are not all touched; they 
need the free breath of love to make music in the 
home of faith. 



74 1MM0ETELJ.ES OF LOVE. 

Look there! my friend, see that courting self-hood, 
that reserve which checkmates its companion! 

You have not found in his soul the thither shore; 
why then attempt to bridge the gulf yet? 

The demons of Jealousy that haunt the stream of 
passion must first be conquered. 

The springs thereof yet change with the using: 
Did you note the content of his spirit when solaced 
by others? 

He that looketh abroad for his loves is a wanderer 
still in the desert ; the sexual variety but aggravates 
the thirst: It points back, an index, to something 
that divides you. 

The dove of affection cannot rest except in the ark 
of its own construction: AVhen met in fulhiess, the 
going forth is never in hunger, but carrying the 
peace-branch to the starving. 

So I will give you a rule of conduct: 

In your soul prefer the presence of your companion 
in witness of your acts rather than absence. 

Forgive me — said with earnest love — always heals 
some wound. 

Study causes, too, whether you are marital in con- 
ditions of organism : There may be selfishness at the 
root. 

Divorce, also, reports its cause, but not the full 
measure of marriage: Greater is the harvest than the 
seed-sowing. 

Is there a child between you — a dear unfortunate' 



MARRIAGE. 7C 

And it is not responsible for this calamity! It has a 
right to parentage and its protection, to sunshine ir 
the morning of life. 

Add not sorrow to this misfortune: Its right first^ 
then yours. 

Parental love is the next out- wave of the conjugal: 
keep its center secure! 

But the Angel of Divorce is righteous, too: Wher 
justic*e is outraged and life is perilled and the gooc 
of life is imprisoned, this is her gospel: 

Separate hands that are clammy with love's death. 

Separate brains that naturally think apart, and 
hearts whose touch is poison to each other. 

Separate the innocent from the beast of legal 
adultery. 

Se^^arate the pair whose best productions are 
demented. 

Obey God and live! 

Keep the commandments of Love! 

Whom man hath joined together, God will put 
asunder; and the promise is theirs: 

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after right 
eousness; for they shall be hlled. 

And the Angel of Soul-mating hath a gospel, and 
this is the chain of pearls by which she links them in 
one: 

As God hath united you by the higher law of love, 
I charge you both to watch and pray lest ye enter into 
temptation. 



76 IMMOETELLI^S OF LOVE. 

For if you cease to love and protect, God liatli 
divorced you! 

As tliis woman is your wife she is your equal in all 
the rights and blessings of life. 

Have no secrets which are not hers ; keep her confi- 
dence. 

Eeverence her virtue. 

Preserve her health. 

Defend her equality. 

Appeal to her wisdom. 

Study her needs and be generous. 

Worship her with all your heart, mind, might and 
strength ! 

As this man is your husband, you both are one 
social body. 

Consider his care. 

Ennoble his fidelity. 

Embosom his trust. 

And the good he calls out in you return in fullness. 

Make the honeymoons perpetual! 

I pronounce you wife and husband, married accord- 
ing to' the law of God. 

Whom Love hath joined together, let no man put 
asunder. 



O OCTAL Life puzzles me; all my philosophy is gone! 
'^ She was pale and sick, — the angels' oracle in the 
iiigh tower of Inspiration: The doctor said, It is 
consumption, she will not live! 

Wandering lonely and forlorn, she met a stranger; 



SOCIAL LIFE. 77 

he was strong; thej were as the panting hare and the 
laughing brook. Three months so, and she was well, 
robust and happy; and then they repelled with the 
vigor that they attracted; being in magnetic equilib- 
rium. 

And I had another lesson: A poor Sybil was 
social, but wilting in the desert of passion's barren- 
ness. O horrors of those meetings! the heat burned 
up the oasis in her soul. 

Mutual wisdom said, Depart from each other! So 
he found response in another, keyed to cooler intellect 
that schooled him to self-control and moral grandeur. 
Tlie Sybil wept and sighed till a modest stranger of 
reserve, sphered as the Balm of Gilead with healing, 
entered her home — protectorate, brother and soul-com- 
panion. 

Love mounted her throne now, vined with roses; 
and under her mild scepter they lived in the bloom of 
beautiful unity. 

Her soul, enlarged and free, embosomed itself in 
sweeter friendship with her lirst husband, and they 
loved as sister and brother, as mother' and father of 
their own dear children. 

Then I said in my heart, What o-ight have I of 
social dictation? I cannot tell the ways of the wind, 
nor of the water-arteries down in the deep earth. I 
will cease to tear myself over the proprieties of 
Custom, and rest in the divinity of God's laws, pray- 
ing for wisdom with charity to institute a Social Life 
whose offices of instruction shall balance our trans- 
mitted and acquired vacuums of soul, each the chooser 



78 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 

or refuser of what is personally good or ill, and gov- 
ernment demanding it, that the demons of divorce 
may find no place in our fair world to devonr the 
innocent, and the angels of liberty to the forces of 
love may arch our manhood and womanhood in moral 
excellence clear and deep as the wondrous sky. 

Amiable, modest, friendly; they married; but they 
loved not! 

Each soul famished and turned to bitter hate, and 
the furies held carnival on the bridal bed ! 

As I wondered, there was given me another riddle: 

She was beautiful and sweet as an angel; he was 
acrid, firm, licentious. They loved and were happy, 
for his soul purified itself in this fountain of Adapta- 
tion. 

So I said, Philosophy is folly ; Love has eyes to see 
witliout spectacles ; and it is none of my business to 
prevent a social regeneration ! 

Chained by law to one he did not .love, he grew 
cold and sour,'saying. There is no God, no hereafter; 
life is a burden ; and he planned his own death by 
poison. 

One more night, he said, just to make the measure 
of a full grief ! 

But the night was daylight in his soul; for his 
sister angel was before him, starred on her forehead, 
and in her hand a bud which she placed upon his sad 
heart, where it bloomed. 

He is a dear old man now; calm as sunset, and his 



SOCIAL UFE. 79 

sleep is a child's; for his sister conies to him to open 
his vision; and he sees through the veil a sweet home 
for him, when deemed worthy of departing for it. 

Wlierefore so wilted, O womanly child? Even this 
reveals jonr secret? 

She opened the chamber of sorrow to her spiritual 
sister — the chamber of soul, where she married a 
home ! 

Thej wept together! 

Love's sympathy Avas not enough; the pale one 
needed man's positive will in the calm of honor. 

Could 3^ou have heard the voice of that sister as she 
called her husband ! It had the mellow undertone of 
trust. 

A whisper, a look, a kiss, was her commandment to 
breathe his strong love upon her sinking spirit. 

Two faces met upon that manly bosom, both grate- 
ful — a triune circle, as two buds on one stalk, nurtured 
for the bloom of innocence. 

The commingling tears that felf there! the prayer 
of faith! the good of goodness in that hallow^ed 
hour! 

An angel's voice was heard then; and it said, 
Behold, my brother, for this I will give thee a green 
flower that shall spring Qut of thy bosom ! 



80 nVTMORTELUS OF LOVE. 

T OYE is equal to all things! 

-■^ Slie opens rocky hearts with the wand of faith; 

Perennial springs flow out, 
And melancholy is green with hope. 
She brings her summer solstice of truth 
Far into the arctic zone of doubt; 
And bergs of ice melt into happy isles. 

He was self-willed, impulsive, but tender-souled. 
That is mine, she said, mine to develop and love — 
My century cactus, so beautiful at last! 

Impatient, weary, acrid, all day long, 
He brooded over imaginary inconstancy, 
Till the fever of mistrust turned to freezing! 
At night she encircled him in her love; 
Bathed him with her warm tears; 
Kissed away confessional sorrow; 
Placed her head upon his bosom, 
And dipped out all the cold ! 

Measure the sunbeams, the star-spaces, the ocean- 
springs where the fishes drink, the cycles of eternity 
and the relations of love! 

I will tell you something to think of : 

I love you because I cannot help it ! 

Hear it in this silence which the sunlight might 
envy. 

My hand in your hand, my lips printing hearts on 
your lips, and our hearts side by side. 

I am covered with liquid pearls, under the spray oi 



I.OVE. 81 

immortal fountains: I am so near to you I forget I 
have a body: I looked to see if I were clothed, and 
lo, myself imaged in you as whiteness to the light! 

Is love selfish, then, because it clings to its own? 
Selfish when thus developing the best sj)ecimen of 
angelhood ? 

Is she not just, when refusing the greed of self ? 
most worshipful in the council of w^ar, wlien buckling 
moral armor on the breasts of young men and maidens ? 

Does love say, I am willing he should go if another 
can make him happier? 

The consent with candor and sympathy may win 
back the wayward heart. 

But touch the consenting heart and see if there is 
no tremble. 

It is the voice of woman's nobility with instinct 
sensing a widening gulf between her and her husband ! 

Perfect love implies no fear, suggests no contingency, 
thinks of no departure, argues no conditions that will 
delight a separation. 

When these come unsought, she mournfully accepts 
the terms and is kind. 

Love's conjugal circle is primal to all circles; even 
an angel must stand outside of it, else the harmony is 
jarred. 

Let me fold you in my arms, beautiful girl. I will 
give you strength of will, and you will revive my 
boyhood romance. 

By this look you will not forget me. 
6 



82 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Wlien I am Uncle Silver Graj, and jou are a woman, 
I will come to your house and rest — a pilgrim then 
and your angel afterwards. 

Oh, a child's love of a child's love! As a child is, 
my purposes are holiest when I love the freest. 

Touch a single petal of love's affections impurely, 
and paradise is lost! 

I will tread reverently amid the beds of beauty: 
Tliough my feet be dusted with the incense thereof, 
not a color shall be marred. 

The bower where I repose shall ever after know me, 
and the clusters of vines will bow to me, for I have 
ke2)t my integrity. 

Love and obey him! is this the order? War to 
the hilt where rights are unequal! 

What! masculine superiority at the home circle? 
It will sour its very incense! 

Man obeys woman without knowing it, when Love 
and Justice clasp hands. 

Woman obeys man in laughter, as she denies; she 
loves him so. 

Where love is is no statute, no sheriif, no prison. 
It is all the divine obedience of liberty, just as the 
green of the earth obeys the sun and rain. 

Is that love which has to be watched lest it die out? 
when the hand-touch wakens anxiety, and the eye has 
an unsteady gaze? 

Is it art? the option of will? a mathematical calcu- 
lation? a bough table quality of character? 



LOVE. 83 

Has it grievances to report and self-excuses for its 
follies? 

Doth it cunningly test tlie fidelity of its friend by 
the coquetry of experiment? 

Has it a pledge to keep itself safe, with durability 
dependent on a fair promise? 

Is intense ardor of attention the treasury of its 
constancy ? 

As the hazle in the hands of the water- witch finds 
the living spring, so soul finds the depth of love by 
its signs. 

Children walking in the dark feel stronger if mother 
or father speaks encouraging words. 

By some miracle. Love descended from lieaven into 
our world, and she finds it so cold betimes, so gloomy, 
she asks for a hand to hold hers, and never tii-es of 
hearing — 

I love you ! 

It should be said often with its own eloquent 
cadence. 

There is a fire-touch of soul to letters that are cov- 
ered all over with kisses. If intelligent, too, and 
magnanimous in spirit, how healthful! Placed in the 
bosom, where no thievish, spotted hand dares to go, 
the very lungs breathe deeper and freer. 

Send me long love-letters, bristling with brave and 
lofty thought. 

I dare all things when the trill of your voice keep? 
repeating — 

I love you! 



84 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Advice will not lielp you miicli in tlie art of win- 
ning. 

If repellant to whom you proffer attention, your 
effort only intensifies suspicion. 

Itecede to a focal distance, as the earth does in sum- 
mer, about three millions of miles; you may win so 
if you belong to that solar system. 

You must study the law of social attraction planet- 
arily — by the inverse squares of distances. 

Space is anniliLated after all, for the room makes a 
place to fill up and show how vast is the power of love, 
mdening out as sun- waves. 

Who shall separate us? Try your skill, O Hate! O 
Persecution! O Envy! 

You can frost the body of my beloved, O Death, 
but I tell you her love under the snow is just as 
Varm! 

If you hide her among the green leaves of the 
shrubbery in heaven, and many lovers sue there for 
her hand, she will coo to me with the whistle of an 
Indian maid; and I shall go there, and she will wait 
for me, even if it be a thousand years, my own 
Columbia! 

Wind from the lungs of the South, and all last 
year's seeds are in bloom. 

How easy to the eye is the green specked with vary- 
ing colors of floral republics! 

How the young hearts beat in the sun of such inspi- 
ration! 

The physiologist who wrote that the human breath 



LOVE. 85 

is poisonous, being the gas of carbon, must have been 
badlj married! 

When an apostle breathed on the spiritual inquirers, 
they received the Holy Spirit. 

That could not have been from rotten teeth or a 
stomach diseased with theological dyspepsia. 

My whole philosophy is nullihed. Your breath is 
healing to me: I am fresher for a bath in it. 

Is this the fragrance of the soul's flowers, and your 
lips their petals ? 

Breathe on me again: So close all day with you 
and a life with angels. 

Oh, this spiritual breathing! 

Dam the water pool and it sours; choke the soul's 
intuitions to love what is lovely and it grows morose 
and dies mourning. 

Will you iron -case the spring of love lest another 
thirsty soul may drink and be refreshed? 

The effort to monopolize it changes its (channel, and 
it is soon lost to you! 

Oh, the suicide of souls under the name of law and 
order ! 

We are so selfishly afraid that we shall not have 
any honey, we dare not trust the industrious bee in 
culling it from all the free flowers! 

Nobility of character, congenial surroundings, the 
luxury of comfort — these the tests of love 3 

Love enters the lowly cottage where is not a green 
thing, aud sings a song. 



86 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Love finds the rougli diamond in tlie drunkard and 
washes it all bright with her tears. 

The prodigal son is imaged in a mother's soul. 

That is love which kisses all sin away into everlast- 
ing forgetfulness. 

Love is the privilege of purity. 

It and the lily! — both are born through waves 
of trial: They are so clean with beauty! 

Oh, how good is the human soul! how holy to feel 
it growing within me! 

There 's a pure white lily 

Tliat is blooming in the earth, 
A beautiful lily — 

And it hath immortal worth — 
The lily of the soul. 

There 's a pure white lily 

That is drinking heavenly rain, 

A beautiful lily. 

That 's without a scar or stain — 
The lily of the soul. 

There 's a pure white lily, 

And its petals are unfurled, 
A beautiful lily, 

For the glory of the world — 
The lily of the soul. 



HUMAN LIFE. 87 



There 's a pure white lily 

That is fresh with Eden's dew, 

A beautiful lily, 

Of a freshness ever new — 
Tlie lily of the soul. 

Tliere 's a pure white lily 

That wdll blossom best above, 

A beautiful lily 

In the angels' home of love — 
The lily of the soul. 



TTUMAX life hath so many mysteries ! 
-■-*- 1 thought I was wise, when manufacturing poli- 
cies for other people. Let me tell you what I have 
seen, and you will not wonder at my conversion from 
a ministerial respectability to a disreputable decency. 

I have seen a man of iron will, blue as December's 
sky, when too cold for snow, revive at the hand-touch 
of his frail wife; and that is a mystery worth ex- 
periencing. 

I have seen a woman, soul-starving amid a ]3rofu- 
sion of luxuries and kindnesses; and that is my riddle 
for you to guess. 

I have seen a maiden trustingly love her indiiferent 
seducer; what was it she found so precious? 

I have seen a poor and sickly woman, destitute of 
means, contented and happy; do you know the cause? 
She loved her husband. 

I have seen an old lady, mismarried a whole life- 



88 IMMORTEIJ.ES (3F LOVE. 

time, sunny and hopeful; if you wisli to understand 
tlie mystery, ask her spirit-mate who sijigs in her 
dreams ! 

I have seen a prostitute of "greater philanthropy 
than her Christian scorners; is she not our sister? 

I have seen a reformer who visits the prisoner, 
clothes the poor, feeds the hungry. 

He told me his history; was disappointed in love; 
married unhappily; and I knew then why he became 
a Shaker. 

I have seen him weep, and heard his deep sigh. 

Lover as he is of humanity, so good and generous, 
there is a blank in his soul; but he is patient; and 
he has told me about a Spirit Bride! 

A spiritual brother was in a foreign land, disap- 
pointed in ambition, sad, forsaken, sick. 

A sister of mercy cared for him tenderly. 

Tlie physician said. He will die! 

Tlie hour of midnight so heavy! but she is by his 
side watching. 

He had been in a dream far away. AVaking he said, 
Tell my wife and child that I died in their love! 

His head drooped so gratefully on that woman's 
neck in free, weepings and confessions. 

Their souls met. Love's sweeter breathings neutral- 
ized the fevers. He grew stronger and rose rejuvi- 
nated. 

So I learned that love is the medicine of health. 

Another brother was brain- weary, lonely and 



TTTi MATC LIFE. 8& 

despondent: A gloom hung over him: He thought 
of suicide! 

O terrible hour of smothered hopes! Was he in- 
sane ? 

A sister of free loving soul found him so; placed 
her hand in his; laid her unstained bosom upon his 
in purity of heart. 

AVhat! not forsaken — in this cold world? he said. 

She refreshed his parched lips with kisses, as rain 
the wilted grass; and the cloud of melancholy broke 
into shivers of light. 

He was saved! 

So I learned that love is the antidote of insanity. 

A husband drooped and departed; she, faithful 
wife, was still there w^atching the pale form. 

Tliere was a funeral; the body was coffined; prayers 
were said, but she heard them not. 

An angel mantled her in the trance-light of Christ's 
power. 

She rose from her revery; at her command they left 
her alone with the angels. 

Her tears were electric with sympathy; they fell 
upon the white face; she took that hand again in 
hers, and called on her departed; it was love calling! 

Her beloved heard and glided back upon the life- 
cord scarcely severed, and lived again! 

So I learned that love is the resurrection of the 
dead and the key of immortality. 



90 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Oh, the mysteries of human life! 

A man in love with a modest girl of an obscnre 
family. Pride of position forbids the banns, lie 
calls her his lost Pleiad. 

Was his love? 

She drooped, and died of a heart fever. 

AVas not hers love? 

Then he came to himself and was sad. People 
asked, AVhat is the matter with him? 

He could not sleep, for he was thinking of that 
pensive angel guarding over him. 

A war broke out: He wanted to drown his grief. 

For my country! he exclaimed. AVas that so? Ask 
that pensive girl in spirit life! 

Reckless and brave, he won laurels, — first as Colo- 
nel, then a General. 

AVas he happy now? Could you have looked under 
that brass-buttoned vest, and heard the reveille of that 
heart ! 

In a great battle he was mortally wounded at the 
front. They carried him to a shading tree in the 
rear. 

As the red blood throbbed from its artery, he caught 
some in his hand, and threw it skyward, shouting, I 
come! 

From his bosom he took a miniature, and looked at 
it till his eyes glazed in death; and never was a smile 
so magniiicent on a soldier's face. 

But for that modest girl of obscure family, who 
would have led a nation to victory and glory? 



HUMAN LIFE. 91 

Oh, the mysteries of human life! 

A beautiful woman, married to an aristocratic, 
walking corpse! 

Money and society made steel of the iron chain! 

The church said, What an exemplary woman! The 
angels wept! 

I sell my soul for daily bread ! was her confessional. 

But a loving soul must have some avenue to express 
its goodness: She devoted herself to benevolence; 
gave food and clothing to the destitute, and educated 
the prodigal children. 

Thousands blessed her name, and reverenced the 
dust she trod upon. 

But for that marital sorrow, who would have cared 
for the poor and ignorant^ 

Her loving friend, so faithful, slipped the coil and 
was a ministering spirit, visiting my lady's chamber! 

She saw him, heard his voice, touched his hand, and 
was welcome in her heart. 

Her husband, ever jealous, did not know it, but 
thought that beautiful man was dead! 

But for that departure in manhood's prime, where 
were the spiritual devotion and freer communion of 
souls ? 

Oh, the mysteries of human life! 

He was a young man of genius, dissipative in habit, 
persuasive in manner; a libertine, he enticed the 
sylph of goodness. 

They were legally married. 



92 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

He forgot lie had a wife when in the presence of his 
paramours. 

Those hours of revelation! — Oh, the fright of her 
soul as it pondered upon his infidelities! 

She was the mother of a demented child — product 
of his vices and her sorrows! 

Pity mingling acids in the wormwood! 

The tears that Vv^et the pillows! the air that was 
heavy with sighs! O my God! 

What will not a wife and mother endure when she 
feels her high responsibility? 

The world looked on indifferently; it was so com- 
mon ! 

From the fashionable saloon to the black sea dun- 
geons of sots; — this is the way — the usual way. The 
brothel shunned him as he w^ent down into hell's 
putridities and sores. 

In that blank moral night, as she sat brooding and 
cold, a light burned upon the stained wall — a rosy 
light that glanced thence upon her forehead — a blaz- 
ing star! 

An SLug-el was in her room, clothed with a white 
vesture, telling her of the great world-love beyond 
these vales of marital miseries. 

The very throbs of her heart were heard there! 
One hour of such communion was her eternity. 

A new appointment! said the angel: The price of 
trial is usefulness: I consecrate your brain to free 
thought, your soul to free inquiry and love, your hand 
to social revolution! 

TliJ angel vanished as the spirit light was absorbed 



HUMAN IJFE. 93 

into her inner life — henceforth the shrine of Purity's 
offering. 

Faithful to the order of the heavenly guide, slie 
severed the iron chain that bound her married to tlie 
body of this death! 

At its recoil, the shock awaked liim to thought and 
thence to conscience's pain that preludes repentance. 

Even the broken links seemed precious in her 
hands. Ko longer his wife, married soul-full to 
another, she stooped to save the wretch of her agonies. 
She was his sister, and he her brother; so they lived 
in the same house. 

Then the sin-sick man died; she administered the 
balm of tender sympathy; she and her husband were 
the mourners, paying a tribute of genuine respect 
even to the debased casket whence the thankful angel 
had escaped to begin a better life. 

Did you know that, even for these deeds of good- 
ness, the world scorned and rebuked her with crimina- 
tions? 

Slie dared do right in mercy to the last. 

That beauteous queen of bravery, persecuted, im- 
prisoned, scarred and healed, is known among her 
angelic associates. 

Her sisters follow her from death to life, from ruin 
to hope, from hate to love; and her mantle will be 
wide enough to cover them all, when she passes the 
crystal gate of immortality! 



94 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

GHE does not love me now! Alia! jDOor Mercurius? 
^ Here is a glass to see hearts in! What's there? 
Ho! a dark spot — cancerous Sellishness, incurable by 
the doctors! 

Had joii loved even onr dear humanity — the out- 
cast, the sorrowing, the good of the weary ones, the 
beauty of intellect wrecked by your neglect, — she 
would have held to you pendant as the green wood- 
bine close to the water spouts of the cottage. 

You have starved her, and whine over the famine, 
O mendacious husband! 

What! you advanced so high and worthy in the 
mai'ket, fit for the company of angels; and she so low 
and dead, delving in the kitchen, your waiter of lion- 
orables, your former slave to his j)assions now trans- 
ferred to new recruits? 

The meanness of your motive defeats your project! 

By her example of fortitude and the heroism of her 
purity preserved, she will sometime awe you into 
silence. You can never rid yourself of her! There is 
an indissoluble cord that links her and you together, 
and Justice weaves it! Yet a few years of estrange- 
ment in experience with affinities and you burn into 
penitence and weep into tenderness ; but she will for- 
give you all the time! 

Bring her forth early, prom23tly! She is your wife, 
mother of your children, tlie plighted of first vows, a 
paragon of charity in heart. She asks equality — 
science, books, paintings, songs, a purse — and your 
full worship. 

How she will bloom before you ! how precious the 



SPKING BIEDS. 95 

memories of your fidelity when she sits enthroned in 
queenly excellence, the love and pride also of the 
people! 



OPIilj^G birds with amorous singing just as the 
^ trees are budding: why so silent afterwards? 

Because of those eggs, waiting for the inside melody. 
You have wondered why married people change so: 
The birdies will tell you why. 

The great gulf of the maiden courted and the 
woman married, is the same as the difference between 
dreams and their •i-eali ties. 

Exactly so, sir — what we dream of ? 

Tliat depends on magnets. 

Eevelling in single blessedness? "Well, you know 
the rest from observation, soon to be experienced un- 
less you repent, that the value of the revelry is ratioed 
to the money you have. You can be courted till late 
in the afternoon; the evening is engaged for fresh re- 
cruits. Pitiable life at last — all alone! 

Is it not something worth all tasks to repeat in our 
children the prowess of other times? Love them in 
their growing, and the silk of industry will be cables 
of aifection holding them around us at the sunsets of 
life, under the falling leaves of the trees we planted on 
our day of marriage. 

A green old age, like the evergreen moss covering 
all the gray of the solid granite, is patriarchal. 



d6 BLMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

/^OKSTANCY is as precious oil pressed from olive 
^ trees tliat grow in the Gethsemanes of Prayer. 

The fragrance thereof is the righteousness of Faith. 

It hath consecrated me to the worship of the virgin 
mother whose name is Love. 

I have found the guardian of mj eternal years; and 
my song is dedicated to thee, O Sacred Heart: 

Tlie morning, impearled in the dew drops of night, 
Baptizes the world in her roseate light. 
And prints on the undulate lips of the sea 
Tlie kisses that dance from the main to the lea; 
But sweeter in love is the soft cooing dove 
That brings with her kisses the Olive of Love. 

From Purity's bosom is blossoming now 

The buds of a wreath for an innocent brow, 

"Whose odorous sphere is an echoing bell 

Entrancing the soul in a magical spell; 

But sweeter in love from the Eden above 

Is the bloom in my heart of the Olive of Love. 

Iveposing in beauty beneath the watch-stars 
That lift us aloft in their hery cars. 
Are islands celestial by sainted ones trod, 
Arrayed in the peace of the glory of God ; 
But the islands above are not equal, my dove. 
To the beautiful leaves of the Olive of Love. 

To Heaven I gaze thro' thy soul-speaking eyes. 
And see where the holiest paradise lies; 



ILLEGITIMATE CHILDEEN. 97 

I feel thj heart beat as in musical rills, 

Till my own with a holy divinity trills, 

"While the play of its love, like the fountain above, 

Refreshes the branch of the Olive of Love. 



TLLEGITIMATE children! nearly all of us— born 
J- so! 

Does the bond of un-wedlock nullify the law of 
maternity, wlien the seed is planted? does nature re- 
fuse to mold the illegal germ, O Prudes and Lusto- 
crats 1 



Abortions have depleted the soil; tlie mother re- 
volts; the father acts the tyrant: The child is sickly, 
shaded with suicidal bias ; for they stabbed the embryo 
with murderous thought. 

The other child made its involuntary advent with- 
out permit of priest or magistrate: It was souled in 
passion's phlegm; muscular; saved from lust's slime 
in gestation's sacred months; resolute to surmount all 
difficulties. 

Which of these is leo^itimate in the Jud2:ment of 
Generations ? 

If within wedlock's enclosure is the death-damp of 
fear and of foeticide — if without, is moral abandonment 
with alarm of the world's scorn — there cometh thence 
no angels whom heaven appoints. 

The abandon of passion maketh the charlatan; the 
alarm of passion, the coward. 

Love that protects the trusts of the fature hath a 
7 



yO IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 

calm of soul, a strength of embrace, an assurance of 
fidelity whicli the eye speaketh. 

There is a stern divinity in nature. This is the 
heirship she confers and the generation she demands 
for the world's rejuvination : 

Children of health, muscled and brained and rterved 
in beautiful solidity, athletic in hope, sunny sphered, 
brave with power of character. 

Tliat fear may not shadow them under the veil of 
the most holy place, that recklessness of purpose may 
not becloud the moral crowning, that doubt may not 
mold them in restless uncertainty, theirs is the right 
of nature's dowry to the sweet recognition of parent- 
age in soul, and law, and custom — the nurtured fruit 
of spiritual and civic marriage — the welcome children 
of love in the inner and outer courts of life. 

Love sanctifies all things to hallowed uses. 

Nature hugs with force the seed when it is ripe by 
the potency of every organ of mind and body. 

This planted, the child of accident may be heaven's 
opportunity. 

The intensity of intent may exclude the flash-light 
of the ministering angel. 

Tlie instinct of motive is also transmissible; so the 
perpetual habit of temj)erance is the health of genera- 
tion. 

Three things are necessary in this gospel of the 
gods — ^yea, four: a natural marriage, a conception of 
every faculty, circumstances to arouse resisting hero- 
ism and an unfaltering faith. 



GENERA-nON. 99 

That act, O man, reports jou a husband and a 
father. 

For this privilege of woman's choice, you owe her 
eternal worship and all your property proffered her 
and the beautiful one of your mutual pledge. 

]^o guilt is so rank as indifference after immortality 
hath set its seal! 

Conceptive immortality — O startling truth! O pre- 
cious reminder of virtue! 

All the heavens are watching! all the earth is wait- 
ing! 

Those umbilical cords pulse also in the wombs of 
the mother-angels! , 

Beware how you stir those roots! 

Beware ! Shall the cry of murder go up to heaven ? 
murder of the innocent! the bud torn out to die, and 
a matron spirit from very mercy to nurture it up 
there in her own bosom? 

What is sown must be fostered with the tenderness 
of the Over-Soul of wisdom and love. 

O Life-builders! bring suitable material to the little 
angel — protection, affection, attention ; and blessed art 
thou among men! blessed art thou among women! 

rtENERATION!— Study its laws— the laws of life 
^ and duty. 

Is there no better way than the accident of experi- 
ence? 

Oh, the lessons of the past! 

Who sliall be my father? asks the spirit of Love. 
Who my mother? 



100 immokteli.es of love. 

The richest crops from good seed in good soil; the 
fairest flower from the select rose-bush tended with 
care ; the soundest fruit from the matured tree which 
no worm hath eaten; the sprightliest animal from the 
healthiest, swiftest blood; the sweetest song from the 
egg of a loving bird. 

These are nature's nobilities whom the Lord of 
Improvement hath crowned as the perfect standards 
of generation. 

Select with care, O maiden of purity. 

Consult your heart; yea, your intellect, your hope, 
your ambition for maternity, your afiection, your 
virtue. 

Pray without ceasing; reflect, consider — not only 
what is agreeable, but prudent; beautiful, but phy- 
sical; genial, but healthful. 

Kough diamonds wear well; rude muscles are strong; 
steady nerves are safe; broad chests have deep lungs 
and vigorous heai'ts are nestling in them. 

The symmetry of the shoulders, the elasticity of the 
limbs, the resolution of the lips, the curvature of the 
cheeks, the whiteness of the teeth, the aquilinity of the 
nose, the eye-color and lashes, the brow, and its breadth 
and height, the fibre and gloss of the hair, the tower- 
ing of the coronal brain, the habits of life, the tone 
of the voice, the electrics of the hand ! 

What a life-book to read, waiting for the second 
edition! What a prayer of intellect at the altar of 
Love! 

Mingle the light and dark, the orange and brown, 
and note the temperamental coloring for the rainbow 



GENERATION. 101 

of future life' and yet, O child of Hope, nature's chem- 
istry no art can equal. 

linow that the glow of crimson and bright green of 
the sea-shells were limned by the pangs of emotion as 
their tenants gloried in the splendor of conquest. 

How beautiful the dyes of the dying dolphin ! This 
is the temperament of soul-emotion. 

As you think, as you love, as you seek, as you act, 
so the characteristic coloring in the child of promise. 

What so sacred as the secret springs of generation? 
what so holy as the purity of their health? what so 
God-like as to obey the highest wisdom ? 

Love, but check its affection until the sober angel 
of science has measured the inner and outer courts of 
marital worship. 

One alone among the sinewying youths is to be 
thine; be wise, therefore, and trust. 

It is for you to ofier the heart, and him his heart in 
his hand. 

The seal of wisdom to the warranty deed of Love is 
marriage. 

The hour is hallowed to prayer; the law of temper- 
ance in all things has been obeyed; the purpose is 
holy ; a welcome child is conceived in spirit ; the bend- 
ins: heavens of ansjels are silent as the stars. 

The power of the highest shall overshadow thee, 
and that which shall be born of thee shall be the Beauty 
of Holiness! 

Guard the sweet bud from chill wind and frost. 



102 IMMOKTELLES OF LOVE. 

There is gestative gospels in food and drink ; instinct 
selects as bee tlie blossom's nectar. 

Savior-making is your privileged art, O bappy 
mother. 

Be heroic; positive to harmful influences. 

Walk where crawls no reptile; ride where reels no 
drunkard; visit where no disorder can mar the soul's 
serenity. 

Be negative to the good, calm and free to angel light 
as open flowers at noon-day. 

It is possible to born the beauty of heaven in our 
world ; and what a maternal glory ! 

What cannot the angels of this life and the next do 
for our race, when fathers and mothers are mediumized 
to the spiritual of all the laws of their being? 

Entrance the eyes with the beautiful, the ears with 
the musical, the intellect with the rational, all the 
senses with the affectional. 

Place your hands, if need be, upon the active organs 
of great brains and sip life for the new soul as the rose 
does honey from the bountiful dews. 

Love the dear one in its holy of holies; it will print 
a dimple on the cheeks and arch the brows so splen- 
didly. 

O young mother of prayer, enfolded so safely in the 
arms of a true-souled husband, bring up all the forces 
of your being to the mount of spiritual transflgura- 
tion, thence to furnish life-supply in the develo23ment 
of practical character, and you shall hear the angels 
say,— ^ 

This is my beloved child! 



SPEING-BLOOM. 103 

■DEAUTIFUL is the spring-bloom of cliildliood ; 
•^ what so responsible as to preserve its native nobil- 
ity for the battle of life? 

Be select in food, and. drink, and raiment, and 
shelter. 

Songs, too, and toys, and smiles, and kisses are psy- 
chologizers of character. 

Would you wean your child aw^ay from vicious asso- 
ciations ? 

Be yourself its playmate; a fellow-student and 
exampler. 

Would you teach it to love its home ? Make it lov- 
ing in your soul: guard little words and looks. 

Turn its nascent mind out to the soul of things. 

Use God's medicine of pure air, and water, and 
sunlight. 

All life a school; all of us pupils; and intuition, 
inspiration, conversation, our lessons; and the practice 
of knowledge our religion. 

What the discipline? The commandment of confi- 
dence, kiss for a blow, love-look for a frown, frolics in 
water, sunbaths, gymnastics, amusements, concerts with 
the birds, plays with the child-angels! 

I think, when we practice so the new life, there will 
be no more crying of children when they are born. 

Let us love on — the world will yet find its Holy of 
Holies! 

TvAUGlITEIiS kept in ignorance of the most im- 
■^ portant functions of their being; learned after- 
wards by just the sufierings their mothers endured! 



104 IMMOETELLES OF LOVE. 

Trying to preserve the virtue of a child's wonder- 
ment, that it was bought at a store and brought home 
in a band box! 

The secrecy you install generates a vicious curiosity 
to pain over the dreaded mischief. 

A hidden experiment asks, What are these strange 
avenues that attract me so? In the heyday of a romp- 
ish daring, the syren of temptation stabs the innocent; 
the'girl comes home weeping; the youngster braves it 
out, familiar at last with the street of ill fame, where 
he riots and rots before the scarlet goddess of Syphilis ! 

Early and late, O parents, instruct your daughters 
and sons to reverence all that God hath made. 

Let us endow a new professorship in the schools — an 
Esoteric Anthropology — that marriage may be a holy 
sacrament of all the soul's aifections. 

Bloom of affection, sweet June-life, kisses quicken 
ing germinal passion, as bees carrying pollen from 
flower to flower. 

The frost chills, and the cold night hugs the petals. 

The curculio stings the embryo fruit, the mill-dew 
rots it, the spider-webs throttle it, millions of tiny 
apples fall before the luckless wind. 

Is this the fate of lovers? 

Lo! October's apples, large and luscious, one to a 
thousand blossoms! 

And this the philosophy of life? the fruit of the 
orchard unfulfilling the promise of its summer? 

But is nature defeated? Can an apple grow from 
a tree not first sweetened in bloom 1 



COJklMEKCE. 105 

There is never a STinny old age without an early free 
heartedness. 

/COMMERCE — of suns with planets, of primaries with 
^ satellites, of comets with magnetic atmospheres. 

Ships whitening all seas, as lilies the lakes, for 
exchange. 

Nations holding industrial exhibitions and peace 
jubilees; the wild tribes supplying healthful electrics, 
as mountain streams to the thirsty city. 

Day lying on the bosom of Night; Summer asleep 
in the arms of Winter. 

The flowering anthers dusting the stigmas for 
impregnation: Love's floral art of making beauty, 
fragrance and fruit. 

All circles of being risen in the human, prophetic 
of angelhood; Spirit with Soul married; body the 
child of their constant commerce and polarity of 
attraction; thoughts, motives, ho^^es, ambitions, the 
products of their industry — keepers of the seals of 
immortal identities! 

Hand touching hand, heart to heart in pulsation, eye 
to eye that glances love again, poetry of graceful man- 
ners; honor sound as a merry bell! 

So happy all, the social feast gladdens every spring 
of health. 

This is the sex-commerce of the angel-minded; the 
magnetic freedom that rescues from Love's starvation. 

Let us build temples for social worship, as they do 
in heaven, where the pure can be purer still for the 
interchange of souls. 



106 1MM0RTELI.ES OF LOVE. 

T3EF0RMER he was. A few streaks of gray were 
-'-^ in his beard; his garments were dusty and worn. 

Care-rifts were plowed into his forehead; his step 
was firm with a slight tremble from weariness. 

I saw him gaze up, as if beckoning the angels, and 
tears swam in his eyes till he could not see for very 
glory. 

I asked him. Have you a home? He bowed his 
head, and those tears fell on some wilted grass, and lo, 
in an hour it was all green again! 

Then I asked again, Have you money? and he was 
silent. 

So I entreated him — ^What is the hidden spring of so 
much fortitude? 

From a secret pocket over his heart he drew forth 
this letter, and its touch was electric, for it was fresh 
from a loving hand: 

!N"ew Years, 1ST3. 

My Dear ; 

A happy JSTew Year! I am so glad to learn of the 
good you are doing. Whilst so happy in our love, I 
sadden to know that so many are deprived of its bless- 
edness. Be calm and not anxious, and you will have 
good inspirations. My heart goes out to you in your 
travels, working so hard for us all. I have faitli in 
you, and love you with all my mind and strength. 
Could you see down deep in my soul, how I love you! 
More to me than all else, I love you better than myself. 
Twenty years — almost twenty — we have been married, 
and our love is fresh as the morning. Be happy! 
think not of the past — that, too, is beautiful — ^let us 



coNFESsma. 107 

live in the present, I can be happy only as you are 
so. Though poor in purse, we are rich in love. When 
yonr sweet heart beats against mine, all is calm. I can 
go no where without your rest of soul with me. My 
arms around your neck and I am with you in spirit. 
Do you feel my heart? We cannot love apart, nor 
live except in each other's love. 

Ever your . 



CONFESSING to the wise and prudent, 
^ Brings sunshine out of the storm. 

Let the soul out of its prison quickly! 

Keep not back a single secret thought! 

Duplicity is the soul's detective! 

The fear even of hurting one's friendship 
By confessing our weakness, wounds it deep. 

Out with it, my dear! 
Tell all, said a beautiful wife, 

Locked fast in his arms, 
Both sad for the strange alienation. 

All was told in truth ; 
Hearts wept, but they budded again. 

Be watchful, for words 
May wound in the tender of heart. 

Be instant in prayer, 
Lest mistrust may slay thy beloved! 

O weeper of soul. 
Confess and forgive in thy love! 



108 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

The spring-fonts must flow, 
Or lost is its channel to you. 

Afraid you'll not last, 
Unless you reserve in your strength? 

So small as all that, 
O man, with a heart and a will? 

Try vivants tableaux 
Of love in all ways of your art; 

Enchant eyes and ears, 
Tastes, feelings, and cheerfulness, too. 

The fear of a loss 
Enfeebles the holiest trust. 

Pour out your strong soul. 
As sunbeams to green every thing. 

The deeper the pulse 
Tlie larger the blood courses round. 

The well doth fill up 
With freshness as water is drawn. 



"PURITY is the heart of wisdom, the standard of 
-^ value in the angel-markets. 

Think you this precious diamond is purchasable in 
a social Golgotha, where every merry feeling is cruci- 
fied? where piety is disease? 

Let me read to you from the Book of Life : 

Every human organ, from the crown of the head to 
the sole of the foot, is centripetal in the sexual. 

Tlie heart's pulsation, the lungs' magnetic breathing, 
the intellect's thoughtfulness, the senses' emotions, all 



YOUNG FOKEVER. 109 

the functions are representative angels of ministration 
within the sacred chamber of sexual commerce. 

If this is falsified, in instinct or habit, all the body 
is infested with robbers — obsessed — prostituted! 

If true to the watch-light of reason, it is the Con- 
gress of Affections assembled, legislating on this order 
— Kepeat us in perfectness of beauty! 

This is the heaven of eternity; the millennium 
of two mated souls; the beginning of a new human 
race. 

Would you have right to this tree of Paradise, whose 
leaves are for the healing of the nations'^ 

Install the court of Perpetual Chastity by reverent 
obedience to the laws of your bein 



& • 



TTOIING forever! — this is immortality! 

JN'ever think of growing old ! 
O Innocence, that keeps us fresh! O Confidence, 
That hangs rainbow dews on the weeping w^illows! 

Over all crosses love spreads mosses; 

Tho' the snow falls where the rocks are bare, 

The crystal spray hath a rollicking way; 

And the mosses are green 'neath the silver sheen! 

What restraint of want ever made one younger? 
AYhat gluttonous life ever satisfied hunger: 
What interference can correct soul-election? 
What yielding to fraud can embosom affection? 
What possible hope for th' immortal and real, 
That buds not in freshness from the new ideal? 



110 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

Love is the blood of the spirit that is horning 
Her angel body in this wasting temple, 
^ '^ * Early in the morning; 
And if through its heart-valves a few pnlses creep, 
Death will lie down with us in love's dreaminess fast 
asleep ! 



A E^GEL of my pilgrimage — she speaks : 
■^ O mated sonl! the sun is not nearer to summer 
than you to me. 

As your love-life is so am I manifest. 

Your sphere is the loom by which I weave a body- 
guard familiar to your eyes. 

Your moral self is reflected in me; you see me dark 
or light, as you are dark or light within. 

When you were fearful and unbelieving, you thought 
me inconstant; now you lov6 me better, trust me 
more, and call me your heavenly guardian. 

The change is in you; the trance of mind to brighter 
vision clears it of the mists of self. 



"KTIGHT! the stars are out watching, the dews falling. 
In the inner chamber resting; the mantle of 
dreams around me; I am a child again, playing as in 
other days. 

By my side, O beloved ; ^^our rest in mine and mine 
in yours. 

I dreamed we w^ere under that maple tree again, 
wiser grown, the silver in our locks! 



lEON-SINKSVED FACE. Ill 

Our hands clasped; our heads dipped towards each 
other's; we relived those early hours w^hen there we 
plighted the vows we have kept. 

No words were spoken; but our souls said, We will 
wed in the spirit life! 

We w^oke together, and a sunburst of morning 
ponred its sweetness npon ns. 

All day our faces were lit up with the glory that 
fell on ns tliat ni^ht we were re2:istered for union in 
our new home with the angels! 



TRO]!^-sinewed-face, drooping brow of wrath, voiced 
-*- to harshness, ice-incased, the touch of his sphere 
was clammy. 

The demon of slander w^ent forth from his heart; 
she stood on his forehead, and tlie reaction of her 
spring upon her victim indented her hideous claws 
deep into his flesh. 

The cup he drank turned to mold upon his lips. 

The anger he harbored set the visual angle to his 
hardness of nature. 

Jealousy daubed its slime upon his cheeks. 

Affections chilled, the childred fled from him, and 
pnre w^omen shuddered j^assiug him in the street. 

Why did I ask the question. So ugly, man of vices? 

One night he died, and was roughly buried; the 
years waned, and he was forgotten. Sad and heart- 
sick over the evils of life, I sought my room and prayed 
for the angel of Patience to economize all the virtue 
of my tears falling upon my heart. 



112 IMMOETELLES OF LOYE. 

And I was in the deep sleep of the niglit-visions. 

An angel came; he was genial as the morning; 
beanty sat on his foreliead; on liis lips were the dews 
of innocence; the palms of his hands bore the imprints 
of hearts; love's flower of faith bloomed from ont his 
bosom; he was vestured in white; his voice was mel- 
lowed to tenderness, speaking great truths. 

He came nearer, and lo, that man of evils once, the 
ano^el of e^races now! 

What has wrought this change? I asked. 

Love! said the angel weeping. 

When cold, starved and dead, I took the hand of a 
departed sister; she led me to a fountain which is 
Purity; she bathed my forehead with her hands and 
washed away the prints of sin ; she spoke sweet words 
to my soul, and I felt a rising purpose ; she kissed my 
black lips, and I loved again ; she touched my heart 
with hers, and a new life was mine ! 

I heard your prayer for the angel of Patience. De- 
spair not: Love is the savior of the world. 

Keep her eternal trust! 



"nEPPJVATION is the basis of hope. 

-^ When a loved one departs, there is an inquiry for 

a hereafter. 

We pass the dream-vales of death. 

AYe meet an ano^el returnino^ with the elixir of im- 
mortality. 

Sweet faces with tear-pearled eyes beam on us. 

O zephyrs from the spirit-groves! O freshness from 
the rivers of God! O love from the loves of angels! 



DEPEIVATION. 113 

On the green earth I lie, so soft, eo stilL I am in a 
great deep of tlioiight. 

Whisper to me, sweet grass ! Sing to me, babbling 
brook! Kiss me, clustering vine, hugging the rock's 
solid breast! 

Delay not, for you bless me only for an hour, and 
are gone! 

Tlie water dries up, the mountain crumbles, the sea 
recedes — and I? 

JS'ature clothes herself so beautiful, then dies — and I? 

]S'ever the same stream flows, nor the same flower 
blossoms, nor the same w^ave undulates on the lake. 
This comes; then that; then what? 

I am living in a vast sepulchre — on the decay of 
buried cities, once populous, now silent; walking with 
death that ever lives to die! And what is my late? 

I was an infant once, a youth of age now, and grow- 
ing old! Wilt thou approach nearer, O Death, that 
I may know thee better? 

I slay death every day, but every conquest hardens 
the shield of this body, to break the easier. 

Is there no spot outside this ruin wdiere I may stand 
— the master? 

Who owns me to divide me so — this inheritance of 
myself ? 

O unseen world, you seem to love me best! Ye 
weave me up, and unweave! 

The summers fade, the stars set, the pearly dews van- 
ish; is this my destiny also — dissolved? 

Let me change places with this broken rock; is not 
8 



114 imm()ktelle:s of love. 

this the order? A thousand years old? a million? an 
eternity? Tlien why not I? Am I not yonr equal? 

But why a past or future where I can know nothing? 
Why coniine me to the last half of the nineteenth 
century? Where is thy justice, O Divine Justice, in 
instituting a blank where I never was, or can be? 

Waking this morning I was conscious of yesterday, 
and, thence another yesterday, and so on, days, weeks, 
months, years; and is there any end to the life-circle? 

The form of my friend is dead — cold. — pulseless! 
The eye is glazed, the brain is still, and a sweet smile 
plays on the pale face ! 

I came down from heaven, says Jesus. So did a 
sunbeam. And w^hy not my friend? wdiy .not I? and 
ascend in the upward arc of life? We brotJiers, Jesus, 
the sunbeam and I! 

Grave of my friend! let me rest here! — what mem- 
ories return! 

Though but the old garment riven and rotting, which 
the green clover is weaving up for its beauty, it is a 
tie to my own soul unstringing — a cable of love, with 
two hearts pulsing in it — carriers of the news between 
the world where he lives and mine but half lived out. 

'No hope is buried with the sacred dust; death's 
touch quickened all its springs. 

Have I ever wounded the dear departed? I know 
my tears have a healing in their flow. 

The incision in the bark of yonder tree is grown 
over, like the kiss of lips bridging the mistake with 
that loving souvenir — Forgive me! 



CONTENT. 115 

The mark is left; but dearer is the trust for tlie 
healing of the wound. 

Will I know my friend by the scars? Will not 
these bind me closer to him for the sake of justice? 

Weary ones, tired of earth, do you wish also to die? 

Cut off hands, feet, head — have you got rid of self? 

O this finding ourself stranded, tempest-tost in the 
transit of worlds, on the rocks of discontent, wrecked 
by rashness! 

The safe way thither is obedience to the laws of life. 
Will you break the shell of the egg to aid the process 
of incubation, open the buds to help the flowering, or 
harvest the grain in the milk for an earlier crop? 

Haste out of the body is spirit-abortion! Our earth- 
life is for angel-gestation: When patiently endured 
and finished, pass higher — plump, full, golden! 

All things grow beautiful as they leave us. 
There is so much love above us, we must go. 
Call us in the eventides, O angels! 
We shall wake from sleep at the whispers of your 
love! 



riOXTENT thyself, O my soul, with a littltj. 
^ The ground sparrow asks only for a shelving sod, 
and the flower cup a tiny space; but how full the songs 
in the air and fragrant the aromas! 

Wliy so many acres to support my little self? 

A spot as big as the periphery of my body, from the 
tips of my hands and feet round to my head, is all I 
need of tillage land. 



116 IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 

When I drop this earth-garment that encases mj 
spirit, let some loving friend gratefully plant it under- 
neath my own dear spot, and see if do not show you 
what is beautiful ! 

Embalm no dust ; make the most of the transition ; 
and, if you have spirit eyes you w^ill see me imaged 
in the fruit tree you must plant upon my grave. I 
Bhall be there with you! I, the risen angel, tuning 
the wind to the merry whistle of my boyhood ! 



T^NTEANCED ? Everything is familiar, yet strange, 
-*^ old, yet new! There is a great glory in all I see — 
light everywhere! 

Wliat are those sunbeams, falling like a golden veil 
with silver stars in it over all your person? What is 
that transparent body I see through it, so beautiful an 
Angelo wo aid forget he is a painter, for rapture of 
the vision ? What that heart descending to me, now on 
my bosom pulsing, absorbed into my heart till all my 
beinof is ano^elized? 

Have I indeed beheld you, companion of immortal 
years? Death will be the minister, pronouncing us 
married according to the laws and usages of the spirit 
world ! 



TTAEYEST-home!— The boughs are jeweled with 
-*-■- fruit; the migrating birds are in concert of de- 
parture; the grains bow their golden crowns to the 



HAR^TEST-HOIVIE. 117 

monarchs of the soil; gray is the beard of the moun- 
tains; the leaves of the purpled forest are sailing 
in the rivers. 

Is nature dying? 

Tliere is life under the husks, under the whitening 
sods, under the icj shims of the dark coves. 

Let sunlight in next Spring, and see how nature 
repeats her infinite goodness. 

The frost of years trails over our foreheads; it snows 
upon our locks; dim are our eyes from beauteous vis- 
ions; our ears are dulled to earth's sounds for the rap- 
ture of heavenly music; there is a sacred tremble in 
our frames, so great is the rash of light. 

Is the shadow creeping on — the shadow of our 
guardian angel forecast in our journey together ? 

Growing old at the fireside? Nay, younger; we are 
the youngest children ! 

Beautiful was our morning of love. Hope dropped 
her tears on the lips of the roses then. 

A happy wedlock; how loving was the coo of our 
doves ! They were in the nest, enfolding wings upon 
their mother's heart. 

But the doves have fled; the nest is vacant; we are 
alone again, as when first we plighted our vows; how 
dreamy all the hours! 

Hand in hand we sit under the same maple, old and 
wide spreading; and we are courting each other as 
before, with promise this time to marry up there! 

Our hearts are full; when will tlie accoucheur enter 
to loose the vital cords? 

O resplendent sunset, all the sky a liquid gold! The 



118 



IMMORTELLES OF LOVE. 



hill-cloud is a cradle; wliicli of us sliall first be rocked 
to sleep? 

We are both in it — tenderly! tenderly! 

Tlie sun-god pauses to feast his eyes on the happy 
mates at the door of heaven! 

There is a sons: in the still air! 




INDEX TO SUBJECTS. 



Angel of Pilgrimage, .110 

Antecedents, 29 

Adultery, 39 

Angel Sister, 78 

Beautiful Spring Bloom,.. .103 

Blasphemer, 28 

Breath of Inspiration, 85 

Buds, ...11 

Church, 8 

Challenge, 13 

Cooing Doves, .117 

Commerce, 105 

Compensation. 30 

, Confessing, 107 

Content, 115 

Constancy, 98 

Critic,. 23 

Crown, .- 31 

Daughters in Ignorance,... 103 
Dark — Weeping Mother, ... 36 

Death, 113 

Deprivation, ..112 

Divorce, 74 

Drunkard, 52 

Eclipses, 11 

Elective Affinities, 37 

Entranced, 116 

Faith, 21 

Flowers, 35 

Foci, - 57 



Fountain of Adaptation,... 78 
Free Love Reformer, 92 

Generation, 99 

Gestation, 102 

GodDouhter, 29 

Grave of My Friend, .114 

Habit, 32 

Harvest Home, 116 

Higher Law, 72 

Human Life, Mysteries of. . 87 

Human Sighs, 65 

Hypocrite, 52 

Illegitimate Children, 97 

Insanity, Cure of 89 

Intuition, 58 

Iron-Sinewed Face Ill 

Jealousy, 24 

June Life, .104 

Life — Principles, 10 

Liberty, 18 

Lily,. 86 

Love, - 80 

" in Distances, 84 

" '" Fidelity, 81 

" " Benevolence, 91 

" Of a Mother, 86 

» " A Girl, 81 

" Unrequited, 94 

" By Signs, 82 



INDEX TO SUBJECTS. 



Love Unselfish, 60 

Love Letters, 83 

Loving Trust of Wife, 106 

Mad Souls, 48 

Magdaline, 45 

Man, ..^,.. ....._ 10 

Marriage, 70 

Married, 51 

Marrying a Home, 79 

Medicine of Love, 88 

Minstrel, _.. 43 

Mornings of Love, 7 

Murdering, 15 

Music, 35 

Nature's Worship, 8 

Night— Spirit Marriage,. . .110 

Olive of Love, 96 

Patience, 73 

Peace, 17 

People, 13 

Prayer, ._ 27 

Pre-existence, _ 1 14 

Profit and Loss, 27 

Prophecy, 36 

Prostitution, 56 

Purity, ...108 

Reformer, ..106 

Relatives,. _ 45 

Religion, 20 

Resurrection, 89 

Responsibility, 41 

Revolution, _ 9 

Revery, .113 

Robin Red Breast, 35 

Rules, 20 



Satiety, 57 

Self Denial, 41 

Sexual Brute, 53 

Sexual Variety, 74 

Shaker, 88 

Sinless Sinner, 60 

Single Blessedness, 95 

Slander, 23 

Soul Commerce, 64 

Soul Mating, 75 

Soul Starvers, 49 

SocialLife,. 76 

Social Magnetism, 62 

Social Monopoly, 85 

Soldier in Love,. _ 90 

Starving a Wife, 94 

Stealing Virtue,. 44 

Sybil,. 77 

Temptation, 32 

Theory,.... 33 

Thoughts, 22 

Truth, 27 

Transmission, 54 

Tyrant, 53 

Unsexologists, 39 

Vampire, 53 

Vices and Virtues, 25 

Virgin, _ 50 

Virtue, 70 

Wars, 15 

Whispers of Angels, 115 

Wife, 68 

Woman's Love, GQ 

Young Forever, 109 



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